Salton Sea

Devir’s small-box line has another game that takes the phrase seriously: Salton Sea is physically compact but rather full at the table. Each player runs an oil-extraction company in the North Sea, and this is a luck-free economic design with an impressive amount of game inside a modest box.

The interesting decision is this: money is not merely the objective, or even just the fuel for the system; it is your action supply as well. A turn therefore asks where that capital should go, because paying for one move also narrows the set of moves available afterwards.

Its individual mechanisms are approachable and sensibly connected, so the purpose of each part becomes clear without an archaeological dig through the rules. Player interaction comes through that economic pressure rather than flamboyant attacks: everyone is making management choices under the same sort of constraint, and the balance keeps the system admirably clean—perhaps a touch too clean for players who prefer more mess in their economies.

It does not quite reach as far as it might, and its precision can feel a little dry despite the maritime setting, but it achieves the important thing: it is properly brain-burny without shutting out a more casual table. A compact economic game with a mechanism worth examining, even if it is not quite Concordia in oilfield overalls.