Review: Deep Sea Adventure is Fun, Quick, and Deadly

Our partners at Down to Game have reviewed one of our favorites: Deep Sea Adventure, a quick, push-your-luck, deep sea diving game! Read on for how this fun and quick game plays.

DOWN TO GAME REVIEWS DEEP SEA ADVENTURE, BY CAYLIE SADIN

Deep Sea Adventure is one of those games that I wasn’t super excited about. In essence, it’s a roll and move game, which is not a mechanic I usually enjoy.

But Deep Sea Adventure has enough of a twist on a roll and move game that it makes it an actual game, and not just a good game, but an incredibly fun game.

So here’s the sitch: You and your compatriots are diving for treasure. You’re trying to grab the most and best treasure and make it back to the submarine. The crappiest treasure can be found nearest the boat, but as you dive further down, it becomes more and more valuable.

Players start their turn by indicating if they are moving down or back up to the boat. Once you start going up, you can’t turn around and go back down. Then players roll two dice, add together the pips, and move that many spaces. When you land on a treasure, you have the option to pick it up.

Simple enough so far. But here’s the catch: when you pick up a treasure, you get heavier, so it’s harder to move. Mechanically, that means for every treasure you have, you’ll need to subtract one from your die roll.

Here’s another hiccup. These d6’s aren’t normal 1-6 dice. They only go from 1-3. So the more treasure you pick up, the harder it is for you to move. And sometimes, depending on how much treasure you have, you might not move at all.

Also, when you pick up treasure, you start using up the shared oxygen supply. Why the oxygen is shared, I have no idea. It’s the only part of the game that doesn’t make any real-world sense, but it does up the competition in the game!

At the beginning of each player’s turn, one oxygen will get subtracted from the supply for  every piece of treasure the player is holding. If you have not made it back to the boat by the time the oxygen runs out, you drop all of your treasure.

What did Caylie think of Deep Sea Adventure? Click here to read more!

Caylie Sadin is the Editor-in-Chief of Down To Game. She’s in charge of penning almost everything on the site, from this page, to the reviews, and even the descriptions of the rules videos. You’ll also see her face in her review videos.

Caylie’s nerdiness began when she was about 8 years old, and was introduced to some classic Dungeons and Dragons novels.  Her favorite board games include Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Battlestar Galactica, and Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition. Her favorite book is The Name of the Wind, and her favorite video game series is Dragon Age.