Deep Sea Adventure Board game Review

Warning: dark humour involved

What’s better than a diver? ... A dead diver! But what’s even better than one dead diver? … Lots of dead divers. In the board game Deep Sea Adventure, you can drown repeatedly with your friends before diving again to collect the treasure dropped by your previous diver’s corpse. What could be more fun?

In this blackly comedic board game, each turn you roll two dice and, starting from a submarine, advance along a communal track of treasure tokens. When you have moved you can choose to take the treasure token you land on for points but this will mean that you will move slower and you will use up one oxygen from the shared tank at the start of your turn for every treasure you have. At any point you can choose to go back up to the surface but beware, if you leave this too late and don’t get back to the submarine before the oxygen runs out then your diver will drown. However not all hope is lost, as during the next of three rounds, you can go down to collect your previous diver’s bounty that is placed end of the track of tokens (and you know maybe even say hi to their dead corpse while you’re down there).

With the right group of people who like this kind of dark comedy (read dead inside) Deep Sea Adventure can be a total blast with everyone laughing when you all drown (just like in water polo lessons in PE, but with more laughing and less paperwork). However obviously not everyone will find this hilarious (read still has a soul) and so you just have to be a bit careful before playing or
buying it for someone.

One of this game’s biggest strength is its size, as you can easily tuck the box in with whatever else you might have in a backpack or bag so if you ever have a spare moment you can easily crack it out and play a game. You could even take it on your diving trip to Hawaii and play it with all your friends (actually as I say it that it sounds like a lot less of a good idea).

But hidden under all of the game’s clean aesthetics and surprisingly tiny box is an underlying problem. That is that the most optimal strategy to play this game, one that will let you win most of the time, is actually the least fun way to play. The game shines when you are taking big risks and then drowning with all your friends before and laughing as you all get zero points. However, if you want to even get some points you are probably going to have to play it really safe and turn back almost immediately for fear of running out of oxygen, which is no fun. I find myself often taking risks that I know will probably lose me the game but are going to be more fun than just poking my toe into the water each round.

Overall I would say that if you are the kind of person that likes dark humour and repeatedly dying with your friends then this the game for you and otherwise congratulations for still having a soul.