Published card games
Sea Salt & Paper
Collect origami cards and decide when to end the round, at just the right moment.
- players
- 2–4
- minutes
- 30
- variants
- 3
You’ll need the game box. Marquoir sums up the rules and keeps score.
Setup
- Two draw piles and a river of two face-up cards.
- Each player starts with no cards in hand.
How to play
- On your turn, take two cards from a draw pile and keep one, or take a card from the river.
- Two identical cards played as a duo trigger their power.
- At the end of your turn, provided you have at least seven points in front of you, you may call STOP, or LAST CHANCE to try to widen the gap.
Scoring
- Each family of cards scores by its own rule: mermaids, shells, boats, fish, crabs.
- Multicoloured cards multiply a chosen colour.
- STOP: you score your points; the others only score their biggest colour.
- LAST CHANCE: if the caller stays ahead, they score everything plus a colour bonus; otherwise they only score their colour.
End of the game
- The game ends when a player reaches the threshold: 40 points with two players, 35 with three, 30 with four.
Variants
Threshold by table size
2 players: 40 points
3 players: 35 points
4 players: 30 points
chosen when starting, the scorer follows
Frequently asked questions
How do you score points?
By playing pairs of cards (each has its own effect) and collecting cards of the same type. Some are worth fixed points, others are multipliers based on the colours you collected.
When do you decide to end the round?
When you think you have enough points, call "STOP" or "LAST CHANCE". "Stop" freezes the scores; "Last chance" bets that you will still be ahead after one last turn by the others — otherwise you only keep your best colour.
How do you draw?
Take two cards from the draw pile and keep one (the other goes on a discard pile), or take the top card of one of the two discard piles. Then you may play a pair.
What are pairs for?
Each pair triggers an immediate effect: draw, steal, play again. Mermaid and boat pairs, however, only score points.
What is the winning threshold?
It depends on the number of players: 40 points with two, 35 with three, 30 with four. The first round that crosses this threshold ends the game.
The box
- Released
- 2022
- Age
- Ages 8+
- Designers
- Bruno Cathala, Théo Rivière
- Artwork
- Lucien Derainne, Pierre-Yves Gallard
- Publisher
- Bombyx
- Mechanics
- Gestion de mainCombinaisons poséesDraft ouvertStop ou encoreCollection
- Contents
- 58 cartes
- Expansions
- Sea Salt & Paper: Extra Salt · 2023
- Sea Salt & Paper: Extra Pepper · 2025
Rules on video
- La Vidéorègle Complète 4K du Jeu Sea Salt & Paper par Yahndrev
- Je vous explique les règles du jeu SEA SALT & PAPER en moins de 5 minutes!
- (FR) Comment jouer à Sea Salt & Paper (Bombyx officiel)
Videos in French, hosted on YouTube.
Where to find it
Specialist French shops. Marquoir earns nothing from these links.