Kelp is a gorgeous, asymmetric showdown between the ocean’s sneakiest trickster (the octopus) and its most unlucky predator (the shark). On paper, it looks like a brilliant design… a tense, tactical duel full of deception and deduction. In practice? Well… that kinda depends on which side of the reef you’re stuck on.
Let’s talk about the octopus first. Playing as the octopus is incredible. Every turn is a delicious puzzle of misdirection, stealth, and strategic movement. You’re constantly outwitting, outmaneuvering, and occasionally gaslighting the shark into believing you’re somewhere you were three turns ago. Every manipulator’s dream.
Then, there’s the shark.
Ah yes, the shark. All raw power, primal instinct, and *apparently* crippling indecision. Because instead of slicing through the water like a true apex predator, you’re stuck relying on a bag of dice that feels less like finely tuned instincts and more like shaking a moody Magic 8 Ball. You don’t really hunt the octopus…you just kinda ask the dice gods if you can. And, well, we board gamers all know how the dice gods are. Unpredictable, spiteful, and way too entertained by our misery.
The shark’s main issue is layers of randomness. First, you draw dice from a bag (of which there are three colors that dictate what actions are possible). Then, you roll those dice to see if the ocean will actually allow you to do the thing you planned. This means that, despite your best intentions, a sizable portion of your turns may amount to…nothing. You sit there, staring at yet another handful of movement dice when all you needed was a high-roll search action. Meanwhile, the octopus is deep in a flow state, plotting their next brilliant maneuver, while you’re left to sadly twiddle your thumbs.
I don’t inherently hate randomness. Arcs was my favorite game of 2024, and it’s drenched in chaos. But Arcs gives you ways to pivot, adapt, and turn misfortune into opportunity. It doesn’t minimize luck; it embraces it, rewarding players who can roll with the chaos. Kelp, on the other hand, makes luck a burden placed almost entirely on the shark. The octopus is playing a strategic mind game. The shark is playing an increasingly exasperating game of Yahtzee.
This wouldn’t be as frustrating if the shark had more agency. Sure, there are cards that mitigate the luck, and you can unlock abilities to help smooth out the variance—but these feel like band-aids on a fundamental imbalance. And by imbalance, I don’t necessarily mean win ratios. There’s a serious “fun” imbalance for me here. The octopus has options, multiple paths to victory, and a toolkit that encourages adaptability. The shark just keeps pulling blue dice when all it wants is a yellow. He operates on luck and hidden information. So it feels like you’re only getting half the game while the octopus sits over there, cogs turning for 45 minutes.
There are ways to improve your bag makeup, of course. The shark’s general strategy is to put more blue dice on the board to thin the bag out and move more efficiently across the board. But your whole first half of the game is just circling the board trying to get the right ratio of dice to finally pull the damn colors you need. I dunno…it was just wholly uninteresting.
The other significant factor is, in that time where the shark is circling for a year, the octopus can be pretty cavalier about his life and just go munch four foods quickly to win the game (side note in case you’re unfamiliar…the sharks win condition is to strike the octopus’s location using the red dice and the pull the matching “confrontation card” the octopus pulls. There are 3 possibilities so it’s essentially Rock Paper Scissors). You’re gambling with your life a bit but the odds that the shark pulls the right color dice AND rolls high enough early in the game feels pretty low in practice.
Now, some might argue that this accurately mirrors real life shark-octopus dynamics. That’s fair. But at a certain point, I have to ask: did Kelp prioritize thematic accuracy over fun? Because, thematically, it is spot on. Playing the octopus feels like being a slippery, cunning mastermind. Playing the shark feels like being a frustrated predator slowly starving to death. Which, you know…probably is what it feels like to be a shark.
So where do I land?
Kelp is a really clever design- but only if you’re on the right side of it. If you’re into bag-building, dice chucking, and just rolling with whatever the ocean throws at you, you might actually enjoy the shark’s struggle. Many people do. But if you’re like me and want at least some control over what happens, you’ll probably end up staring into that cursed bag of dice, wondering where it all went wrong.
The deep sea is beautiful, fascinating, and utterly merciless. Kelp captures that perfectly. Maybe too perfectly.
Andy