Tranquility: The Ascent is a follow-up to the very neat and very pretty card game Tranquility. Where the first game had you sailing the high seas looking for islands, in Tranquility: The Ascent you’re scaling a dauntingly snowy mountain. You can do this solo (not advised in real life), or cooperatively; although if you’re playing cooperatively, you can’t communicate with your fellow players about the climb (also not advised in real life).
How does Tranquility: The Ascent work if you can’t communicate?
Tranquility: The Ascent is a follow-up to the very neat and very pretty card game Tranquility. Where the first game had you sailing the high seas looking for islands, in Tranquility: The Ascent you’re scaling a dauntingly snowy mountain. You can do this solo (not advised in real life), or cooperatively; although if you’re playing cooperatively, you can’t communicate with your fellow players about the climb (also not advised in real life).
How does Tranquility: The Ascent work if you can’t communicate?
You’ll start the game by laying out the ten triangular base cards along the bottom of your play area. The other square cards mostly consist of “ascent cards”, which are all coloured red, green, or blue and have a number between 1 and 12. The ascent cards (and the others I'll get to later) are shuffled and dealt equally between all players to form a personal draw pile. Everyone draws a hand of five cards, and takes turns placing them in rows to build up the mountain. The ultimate goal is to place nine complete rows, with the last row being a single card - the summit.
There are restrictions, though. Cards must be placed in rows from left to right, and only if there are two supporting cards below them. The same colour of cards can’t be placed next to each other on a row, and cards can only be placed on rows equal to or lower than their number (so the 1s can only be placed on row 1, the 2s can go on rows 2 or 1, etc.). Finally, whenever a card is placed, the player must discard as many cards as the difference between the card placed and the one immediately to the left of it. For example, if you play a 5 next to a 7, or a 4 next to a 2, you have to discard two cards in both cases.
That all sounds like a lot of rules, I know, but there’s still a lot in your favour as a player. First, although there’s a specific summit card you have to place at the top of the mountain, there are actually five of them in the deck. The numbered ascent cards go up to 12, which gives you a bit of a buffer since you only need to place up to row eight. Also, you’re very much allowed to place cards with the same number next to each other, meaning you don’t have to discard anything. Finally, there are a couple of other useful card types: bridges, which are effectively an “I’ll deal with that later” card, and campfires, which let you take a card from lower down the mountain and move it up.
This is probably where I should remind you of the no communication rule, though - you’re not allowed to tell other players which cards you have in your hand, or what you’re thinking of playing, so you can’t plan ahead based on what cards other people have. This isn’t quite so strict as the original Tranquility, which is supposed to be played in silence, hence the name, but it does bump the difficulty back up.
So what’s it like to play?
Given all those restrictions, Tranquility: The Ascent feels surprisingly well balanced. It does take a little while to get into the groove of the game, but it’s a really satisfying little puzzle. It’s especially satisfying to see the mountain growing in front of you, and feel the anticipation building as the rows get shorter and quicker to complete as you get near the summit. It’s also got great replayability, since the randomness of the cards makes it a slightly different puzzle each time.
If you do feel like you’ve exhausted the replayability of the base game, The Ascent has you covered with three mini expansions already in the box. They each add a new challenge to the game, from a relatively easy one of plotting a path of green cards all the way up the mountain, to the struggle of herding a band of unruly goats upwards to the summit. I haven’t played with the goats yet, but i’m very much looking forward to it.
Thanks to the restricted communication, Tranquility: The Ascent is not the most sociable game. There’s a lot of quiet, sometimes frustrated, thinking during turns, as a player tries to make the best of their hand. At larger player counts (I played at four) it can sometimes drag a bit, since you can’t strategise with each other and there’s little you can do to plan ahead. You can talk about other things, of course, but then you have to pause when it gets round to your turn. I actually think it works better as a solo game, or perhaps a quiet two player one (though I haven’t tried it at two players personally). You do have to adjust your strategy a bit as a single player - I found myself discarding way more cards - but the puzzle is just as satisfying, replayable, and fun.
