Destinies is a thematic and narrative game in which players play through a story together guided by an app. With the physical game components (including dice, cards and miniatures), an interactive story is unfolds on the table in a highly thematic world. The goal of the players is to complete their personal destiny. You must keep this information a secret from the other players. Each destiny can be fulfilled in two different ways (the proverbial paths you can take), but how exactly to fulfil the destiny, you will discover while playing this game. Players cannot (actively) help each other, but they cannot necessarily stop each other either either. Players can get in each other’s way (often unintentionally) or pass on information about their goal (again, often unintentionally). This interaction makes the game challenging and is one of the reasons why the original is one of our favourite narrative games. In the Destinies Sea of Sand expansion, the grim and bleak Europe is exchanged for the colourful desert and oases of North Africa. The dark setting with Christian, Saxon, Germanic and Slavic influences is exchanged for Arabic legends and loads of magic. Grimm make way for 1000 and 1 Nights!
In our review of the base game, you can read in detail about our love for Destinies and how the basic game is played. Destinies Sea of Sand plays largely the same as the original game. In contrast to the base game, the scenarios from this expansion are more interwoven. Where in the original game the different scenarios could easily be played separately (and with different people), the three scenarios in Sea of Sand contain connected/intertwined storylines where (knowledge of) the events in one scenario can influence the next scenario. It is therefore recommended to play all these scenarios with the same group. Furthermore, the game contains some minor gameplay variations. Sea of Sand adds new dungeon and maze mechanisms, giving players even more opportunities to explore the game world. Furthermore, the game contains again a lot of small detailed plastic figures and new object cards.
Destinies was already a great atmospheric, thematic and story game and Sea of Sand gives us more adventures, an even more compelling story and some more gameplay options and variety. A must have for fans of Destinies!
