TL;DR

What a tiny box of simplicity in which you collect treasure from the depths of the ocean. Just make sure you get back before you’re out of air.

Players 2-6

Time 20-30 minutes

People A great game for anyone to play and so tiny you can take it anywhere

Available £20 here / $30 here

The Gist

Why we recommend it

I think something that puts many of us off boardgames is how they can look and how complex they can sound. Overly difficult rules combined with some over detailed and over drawn art of some goblins fighting. It can all just feel a bit childish and unnecessary.

With Deep Sea Adventures though I feel as much joy looking at it as I do playing it. It’s perfectly packed into a tiny box making it easy to take with you, but also respecting your storage needs. When it’s laid out, it looks interesting, it looks simple, it looks well…alluring.

Don’t you want to just know what it is from looking at it? Don’t you want to just pick up all the bits and see how they work. Look at this little guy with his divers helmet on.

They’re cute right? Look at them all crammed into their little submarine that the game adorably says they must share due to “Budget cuts”.

More importantly it’s really simple to play. You’re diving into the depths to collect treasure, the deeper you go the more its worth, the more you carry the slower you move.

The catch is, you’re all sharing oxygen and it depletes the more each of you carry. It’s a game of high risk and high reward. You might be greedy and head for the bottom, but can you get back in time?

You might decide to take something worth less (and sometimes worthless) and quickly head back to safety, but will you end up with enough points?

It’s like a game of chicken, the longer you can all hold out the longer your oxygen will last, but as soon as someone blinks things go south pretty quickly. Soon you will be desperately climbing over your friends as you all trudge back carrying as much treasure as you can hold.

But you’ve overdone it, you’re carrying too much weight and the oxygen is going fast. You quickly try and throw it all away to speed up, you end up just one space away before the air is all out.

Your treasure sinks back into the depths and you go again. It’s a quick 3 rounds and whoever managed to get the most valuable treasure back to the sub wins.

What more could you want really a simple design with simple rules that you can easily take anywhere with you.

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