Sea Salt & Paper Rules

Sea Salt & Paper Rules

Game Overview

Sea Salt & Paper is a card game designed by Bruno Cathala and Théo Rivière, illustrated by Pierre-Yves Gallard and Lucien Derainne, and published by the French studio Bombyx, based in Quimper. It is played by 2 to 4 players, lasts about 30 minutes, and is recommended from 8 years old. The publisher describes its two core mechanisms in a single line: collecting and risk-taking. Its tagline sums up the mood of the table perfectly: "try not to be in the trough of the wave!"

The whole game is built around an origami theme. A few delicately folded papers, and a whole marine universe comes to life on the table: the illustrations show paper creatures and boats, and the box even comes with material to fold your own boat. Bombyx also holds a licence for the ColorADD code, a symbol system that lets colourblind players identify the colours of the cards — a rare and genuinely useful accessibility feature in a game where colours matter.

Objective

Your goal is to create your own ocean: assemble a hand of cards, play cards for their effect, and score more points than your opponents. Points come from the cards you gather and combine during a round, and the game is won by the player who comes out ahead once the scores are totalled. The exact values of each card and the target score are printed in the official rulebook, which Bombyx offers as a free PDF download on the game's page, alongside a set of game aids (also a PDF).

Setup

Sea Salt & Paper needs nothing but its own deck of cards — no board, no dice, no tokens. Because the publisher's page presents the game rather than reproducing its full rulebook, the precise deal (how many cards each player starts with and how the draw and discard areas are laid out) should be taken from that official rulebook PDF, or from the video rules that Bombyx publishes for Sea Salt & Paper on its website. Anything else you may read online is a house rule, not the official set-up.

How to Play

The heart of the game is a simple loop repeated by each player in turn:

Assemble your hand. You add cards to your hand as the round goes on, building towards the combinations you need.
Place cards for their effect. Cards are not only worth points: playing them triggers effects, and chaining those effects into combos is one of the acknowledged pleasures of the game.
Decide whether to end the round. This is the decision the whole design revolves around.

Ending the round: the key decision

When you are in a position to end the round, you have to choose between two options, and the choice is genuinely painful:

Stop the round immediately, locking in what you have and catching your opponents off guard before they can improve their own ocean; or
Give the others an extra turn, hoping to widen the gap and score more — at the risk of letting somebody else overtake you.

The publisher explicitly lists "the excitement of ending the round to catch your opponents off guard" as one of the game's main selling points. Is it worth taking the risk? That single question is what makes Sea Salt & Paper tense despite its gentle looks.

Scoring and End of Game

At the end of a round, players count the value of the cards they have gathered and played. Rounds follow one another until the end-of-game condition described in the rulebook is met, and the player with the best total wins. Keep the game aids PDF at hand the first few times: it is designed exactly for that, so nobody has to leaf through the booklet mid-round.

Common Variants: the two expansions

Two expansions are available, and neither can be played on its own — both require the base game.

Sea Salt & Paper: Extra Salt adds 8 new cards and 5 new effects. The jellyfish, used with swimmers, immobilises your opponents. The lobster, played with the crab, lets you take a card from the top five of the draw pile. The basket of crabs is worth 1 point per crab. The starfish, played with two duo cards, is worth 3 points but cancels the effect of those cards. The seahorse replaces any missing collection card.
Sea Salt & Paper: Extra Pepper introduces an event deck. At the start of each round, the top card is revealed for everyone: it either changes the usual rules or adds new ones. At the end of the round, that card goes to the player with the most or the fewest points, depending on the card — and only they benefit from its power, in addition to that of the newly revealed common card.

A Bit of History

Sea Salt & Paper comes from Bombyx, the Quimper-based publisher also behind Abyss, Takenoko, Codex Naturalis, Imaginarium, Knarr and Nicodemus. It is one of several collaborations between Bruno Cathala and Théo Rivière, and the origami work created especially for the game is one of the reasons it stands out on a shelf.

Where to Get the Game

sea salt and paper card game on Amazon

Beginner Mistakes to Avoid

Playing your cards only for their points and forgetting their effects — combos are where the game is won.
Ending the round too early out of caution, when one extra turn would have widened the gap.
Giving the others an extra turn when you are already ahead, and letting an opponent leapfrog you.
Mixing an expansion in on your first game: learn the base game first, then add Extra Salt or Extra Pepper.

FAQ

How many players does Sea Salt & Paper support? Between 2 and 4 players.

How long does a game last? Around 30 minutes.

What age is it recommended for? 8 years old and up.

Is it playable by colourblind players? Yes. The game uses the licensed ColorADD code, which lets colourblind players identify the colours.

Can I play Extra Salt or Extra Pepper on their own? No. Both are expansions and require the base game.

Where can I find the official rules? On the game's page on the Bombyx website: the rulebook is available as a free PDF, together with game aids, an origami boat pattern, and video rules.

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