SNAP Review – Bermuda Pirates

You are pirates, sights set on buried treasures concealed on a secret island in the dreaded Bermuda Triangle. Can you outwit the other pirates by navigating your boat around hidden whirlpools to bring back the treasures?

Bermuda Pirates was designed by Jeppe Norsker and published by Foxmind Games. It plays 2-4 players, ages 7 and up. Listen to our five-minute audio review, or read on below.

Setup

First shuffle the four underboards and then insert each board into one of the four pins of the center piece.

Next line up the gameboard holes with the pins of the previous layer and push down gently.

Now attach flags to each of the four pins sticking up through the center island. Then toss gems next to each matching colored flag.

Players now take a ship with matching colored buoys and they’re ready to sail.

You can vary the game’s difficulty level by how many buoys players receive: three for an easier game, all the way down to zero if you have a crazy good memory.

How to Play

On your turn, use a finger to push a boat around the board. Try to reach the center island to take a gem. Grab as many as you can and attempt to return back to your starting dock.

Your turn ends when you hit a whirlpool and your boat tips forward, sending all those precious gems flying.

Any gems that land in the water stay there. Any that land off the board or still remain on your boat go back to the center island.

When your boat tips, you can take one of your buoys and mark the spot. That way on your next turn, you’ll know where the whirlpool is and you can try to avoid it.

Players take turns until someone has collected one of each gem at their docks.

Impressions

If your boat tips over, the gems go flying. And if the gems go off the board, you have to put them back in the middle. And you can steal from another player if it doesn’t go off the board.

Jace

Bermuda Pirates has 256 unique setup combinations. This is all thanks to the underboards that contain the magnets in between the layers of chipboard; you have no way of knowing where those magnets are.

We like Bermuda Pirates it because it’s just silly fun. You can even try to play a little cut throat, chasing after other players’ gems left in the water.

It’s a game that anyone in the family can play, and it’s quick. Kids can play on their own. There are no cards, scoring, or reading. No adult assistance required; kids can even set it up themselves.

I’m thankful for the buoys that you can place after hitting a whirlpool. Trying to remember every whirl pool spot would break my brain.

Overall, Bermuda Pirates is a neat game and does something innovative with the components, greatly increasing replayabilty.

The boards have magnets, and when the boats move over them, they tip over. The boats have magnets inside too. That’s the MAGIC of SCIENCE, kids!

There’s so many different combinations of board setups, you’ll never play the same game twice. I liked having buoys to help remember where while whirlpools are.

Izzy

The rule book has an extra variant for scoring: six points for a set of different colored gems and one point per gem thereafter. The first player to eight points wins.

We rate Bermuda Pirates 4/5 shiny gems. Find it on Amazon or look for it at your local game store.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?

The Family Gamers received a copy of Bermuda Pirates from Foxmind Games for this review.
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