Cardboard Corner: Review of Sonar

Battleship is one of the most iconic board games of all time, and one which I owned as a child. And I still remember my methodical approach to the game. Marching up and down the columns, I would systematically find and destroy my opponent’s ships, winning and losing based on the other player's luck. Game play very straight-forward, Battleship cannot be played repetitively without some variations (beyond the expectations of a nine year old boy, of course). Sonar (2017) takes Battleship to the next… sea? wave? rank? I guess ‘level’ is still the best metaphor…

In Sonar, two teams (2 players each) pilot submarines through the deep dark, trying to blast their opponents’ sub to smithereens, doing their best to avoid the same fate. One player is the captain; they move the submarine, decide when to surface, decide when to go silent, and ask the other team for grid coordinates. The second player is the radio operator; they listen to the other submarine’s movements and map them on the grid board, trying to guess where they are, and inform the captain where might be a good shot. A physical barrier separating the two teams, captain and radio operator are forced to do things by sound and feel. Score two hits on your opponent, your teams. Get hit twice, you lose.

And so while Sonar is similar to Battleship in that both are played on grids, board state is hidden from the other side, and players need to guess the location of their opponent, there is a tactical element to Sonar not present in Battleship. One ship rather than multiple ships, but most especially the ability to move that ship in a couple different ways, there are mind games to be played. When to surface and reveal your position in order to reset your movement? When to go silent and make a secret move? Game design extremely tight, hits, misses, and otherwise are often a matter of one or two points on the grid.

In the end, if you liked Battleship but are looking for the next level experience, Sonar (aka Sonar Family) may be it. Giving players agency beyond static guessing, it’s a light game that even children, perhaps not the smallest children, can play. (Team up with a parent and everything is ok.) A developmental game, it teaches deduction and logical reasoning. If this, this, and that, then X must be true… My six-year old son is not very good at it, but he loves the idea and playing, which, from one perspective, is a measure of the game.