Deep Dive - First Play!

29th August 2023

It's a Tuesday evening which means we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for a evening of gaming.

Is this a thorough and comprehensive look into the lives of penguins.... or is it a push-your-luck game about dodging sharks and eating fish?

---

What's in a game?
Tokens: There are 160 square card tokens in Deep Dive!

• Depth: Every token has 1 of 5 'depths' as indicated on the back by 1 to 5 dots as well as differing shades of blue (Both on the front and back.): The darker the blue, the deeper the depth.

5 depths.

• Front: The front of each token will depict one of the following.
  Bubbles: Even though it looks like bubbles, this is meant meant to represent 'open water'.
  Rocks: Pretty self-explanatory.
  Food: There are various different types of sea animal (Food for penguins.) displayed which come in 3 colours (Pink, green & yellow.). Food tokens also display a victory point (VP) value. The deeper the depth, the more VPs it's worth.
  Predators: There are several types of predator illustrated on the tokens, although functionally, they're all identical.

A sample of the tokens.

Meeples: In each of the colours there are 3 differently shaped wooden penguin meeples.

First player token: This oversized irregularly shaped token serves as both a first player marker and on the opposite side a game end tracker.

The tokens are the standard thick card tokens found in board games today. They are study enough and will last unless treated badly.
The meeples are recognisably penguin-shaped and made of wood which makes them pleasantly tactile components.

Despite their small size, the tokens are well illustrated. Pretty much everything looks like what it should look like.
However, I found the choice to use green and yellows colours for food tokens frustrating. While in the photos and under good light, the difference between the 2 colours is pretty obvious, in the less than idea lighting of the pub we first played in, it made differentiating between those colours tricky. Personally, I feel much better colours could have been used.

There's essentially 4 self-explanatory icons and some numbers used in Deep Dive. Players should have no trouble understanding the game.

---

How's it play?
Setup
Tokens: First, sort all the tokens by their depth, then add/randomly remove tokens from each depth according to player count as per the rules.
Next, flip all tokens face-down, randomly shuffle them and and arrange them by depth with depth 1 at the top and going downwards to depth 5 at the bottom.
Players: Give each player the 3 penguin meeples in their player colour.
First player: Randomly determine a starting player. Give them the first player token which they should keep in their personal area with the 1st player side face-up.

​On to play
In Deep Dive players take on the role of penguins diving for food while avoiding those pesky but deadly predators.
This is done by flipping tokens, resolving the outcome and then if possible, choosing to continue to flip tokens at deeper depths or take what has been flipped.
The game uses a traditional turn order with the active player taking their turn before play progresses to the player on their left.
During the active player's turn, the following occurs:
Depth: Play usually begins at the shallowest depth and as the player progresses they will go deeper and deeper. The rules below apply at all depths.

• Flip: The active player must flip a face-down token at their current depth according to the following rules.
  • Rock: If the active player has acquired a rock token from a previous turn, they can discard it begin their turn at any depth not just the shallowest.
  • No face-down tokens: If there are no face-down tokens at the current depth, the active player may choose to skip that depth.
  • Some face-up tokens: If there are any face-up tokens at the current depth, the active player may choose to take one of them. This immediately ends their turn.
  • Trapped penguin: If one of the active player's penguin meeples is trapped on a predator token on a particular depth, the active play may skip that depth.
    See below for rules on predators and trapped penguins.
• Resolve: When the active player does flip a token, they must resolve the outcome.
  • Open water: If a open water (Bubbles.) token is revealed, the active player must immediately move down to the next depth and flip a token there.
  • Food/rock: If the revealed token is food or a stone, the active player may choose to:
    Ignore it: In which case, the active player moves down to the next depth.
    Take: If the active player decides to take the food or rock, they resurface and their turn immediately ends.
    More on food below.
  • Predator: If a predator is revealed, The active player must place 1 of their 3 penguin meeples on that predator token, it is now trapped and their turn is over!
    3 trapped penguins: If the active player has just trapped their 3rd penguin on a predator, they now retrieve all 3.
    ​Then they can take 1 face-up food/rock from any 1 of the depths where they had a trapped penguin. Their turn is of course still over.

​Taking food/rocks: When a player takes either of these tokens, the following rules apply.

• Food: When food is taken, the player must place that food in their personal playing area in columns by colour. This is done starting at the top and going downwards
  This means each player will have 3 columns - one each for the 3 colours.
  It is theoretically possible for a player to create a single long column of a single colour but this is not desirable as scoring is done by completed rows of 3 tokens. a completed row must contain a token of each of the 3 colours.

• Rock: As explained above, when a rock is taken, a player can use it in a subsequent turn to dive down to any depth of their choosing.

Next player: Once the active player has finished their turn, play progresses to the player on their left.
​
​Endgame
When all tokens on any depth have been flipped, the game end has been triggered.
Play continues until the first player is reached, upon which they flip the 1st player token over to the last dive side. All players get one last dive and then the game goes to scoring.

• Completed rows: For each completed row (That is a row with all 3 colours.), the player earns the full VPs for all 3 food tokens.
• Incomplete rows: For each incomplete row, the player earns half the VPs for the total of the 1 or 2 tokens in that row.

The completed top row earns 7VPs. The incomplete 2nd row earns 4VPS while the bottom row only earns 1VP.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

---

---

Overall
Despite its abstractness, the game fits its theme fairly well as you players take on the role of diving penguins!
I've not encountered a push-your-luck game quite like Deep Dive. I've played plenty of games that use dice or cards but I can't think of any that use tokens in this way but it works very well here.

Deep Dive is a good example of a push-your-luck game and there's a clear risk/reward decision mechanic at work: After flipping a token (provided it's not a predator) players will be faced with the decision of taking that token or going deeper which will potentially give them a better reward but also exposes them to the another chance of revealing a predator. The game also employs a classic element of many push-your-luck games where players will be forced to continue when they reveal 'open water.

It's should be noted that mathematically the odds of encountering predators increases as the depth increases - which fits with the risk/reward gameplay.
At depth 1 there are 6 predators tokens out of a total 44 which equates to 13.6% chance of revealing a predator at the game start. At depth 5 there are 11 predators out of 23 tokens which increases it to a 47.8% chance.
It means that if a player gains a stone, it hasn't necessarily made their decisions easier - only changed it! A player can choose to use a stone to go to the deepest depth it they want but the risk is still very high.
Having said that, as play progresses, these odds will change as tokens get revealed over time, allowing a higher level of play to occur where players can observe events and adapt or change tactics.
E.g., if during the course of play 8 predator tokens have been revealed at depth 5 and there's still 9 unrevealed tokens, observant players will know that only 3 predator tokens will encountered in the 9 remaining tiles, giving lower odds of encountering them. As a result players can feel 'safer' going to that depth.

The scoring system also adds some interesting decisions as at times getting a lower value food token of a required colour offers optimal point scoring. This creates asymmetrical scoring objectives between players.

There's not much more to add really. Deep Dive offers both meaningful decisions to take and is a easy to learn game. The rules are very simple and at its core, there's only 4 types of token to think about (Although there are 3 types of food.) and one of those types forces players to dive deeper. The choices a player has are very clear
Along with its theme and brisk playtime, I feel that Deep Dive will have crossover appeal. This can be a good game for casual or less dedicated gamers. it can also be a good filler game.

If I was to be critical I would say despite its quick playtime, it has a relatively lengthy setup: Tokens need to be separated into depths, then turned face-down, then possibly have some added, then shuffled, then have some tokens removed and then play can begin.

It's a minor quibble though and it's well worth it to play this tightly constructed, neat little push-your-luck game.