REVISED DEEP SEA ADVENTURE RULES: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Here are revised rules for DEEP SEA ADVENTURE, the game of undersea treasure-hunting for 2-6 players. The game was designed by Jun and Goro Sasaki, and is published by Oink Games.

DEEP SEA ADVENTURE. REVISED RULES.

The map hints at buried treasure. There’s just one problem: that map is nautical. All the loot lies at the bottom of the sea. Now you sit in the rented submarine, ready to go, though you are not alone. Join the other divers in rescuing the long-lost loot from Neptune’s clutches.

   Sharing the submarine’s rental cost seemed like a good idea at the time. But everyone else aboard is dreaming of hoarding gold, to make it all worthwhile. Sneaky. It’s okay. You are sneaky, too.

   Beware. The submarine’s battery is severely limited. Spend too long away from the submarine, and you’ll have to drop your loot to save your skin. There’s enough energy to attempt three dives. Now it’s time. See who’ll scoop up the greatest haul on this Deep Sea Adventure… 

PREPARING THE GAME.

Place the cardboard submarine at the top of your playing-area. Take the circular red marker and sit that on the number 25 aboard the submarine. This shows the battery power remaining. The submarine must surface when that last flicker of battery power fades.

Turn all the treasure chips face-down, hiding the numbered values and showing only the dots. Keep the groups separate so you can shuffle them as clusters of ones, twos, and so on.

After shuffling all that treasure, create a trail of chips underneath the submarine. Place all the chips with one dot first, followed by the twos, threes, and fours, until the last chip completes the trail. Make the trail as straight or winding as you care to, as long as the chips form a single line.

Set the round counters aside in a general supply pile. These X-marked counters replace treasure chips picked up along the trail as play unfolds.

Players take one diver piece each and enter the submarine. The first player is the person who was in the ocean or sea most recently. Otherwise, roll dice to choose the first player. High-roller starts first. Ties roll again.

OBJECT OF THE GAME.

Leave the submarine and scour the sea for treasure. Scurry back to the submarine before the batteries run dry. Salvage the most treasure to win.

   There’s enough submarine battery power for three deep dives. The game is broken up into three diving rounds. Each round, players score points for treasure hauled back aboard the submarine. The diver with the most treasure at the end of round three is the winner.

   In the event of a tie, the player with the most chips from the highest level of treasure chips is the winner. If players score the same points and the same number of chips, they share the victory.

   Daisy Diver and Dan Diver both score the same points at the end of the third dive. It's a tie. Dan picked up two treasure chips from level three – the chips with three dots on them. Daisy dived deeper, and scooped up one treasure chip from level four. Her exploits, being more daring, win the day.

DIVING ROUND.

A diving round is made up of many turns.

   Players take turns in a clockwise direction, starting with the first player. (The first player may change in diving round two and round three.) A diving round ends once all divers return to the submarine, or when the battery power aboard the submarine runs out at the very start of a player’s turn.

   Only score treasure at the end of each diving round.

   Each diving round starts afresh with all divers aboard the submarine.

   Submarine battery power refreshes at the start of a new diving round.

GAME TURN.

On each player’s turn, run through the following steps…

1. REDUCE BATTERY POWER.

2. DECLARE WHETHER YOU WILL TURN BACK OR KEEP GOING.

3. ROLL DICE AND MOVE.

4. TIME TO SEARCH FOR TREASURE.
5. ARE THE BATTERIES DEAD?

EXPLANATION OF TURN STEPS.

1. REDUCE BATTERY POWER.

On your turn, count the number of treasure chips your diver is carrying while swimming. Reduce the battery power aboard the submarine by that number of chips. If battery power drops to zero now, you still get to finish your turn.

   Battery power is only reduced by divers who are swimming with treasure chips. Empty-handed divers, and divers inside the submarine, don’t lower battery power.

2. DECLARE WHETHER YOU WILL TURN BACK OR KEEP GOING.

A diver only changes direction once in an entire diving round, so this is a big decision. Divers cannot turn back on their first turn out of the submarine. The order of play prevents this.

   Place your diver piece facing down, deeper, until you declare a turnaround – then switch the piece the other way, to make it quite clear to everyone.

   Once you’ve decided on direction, roll the dice and make your move. If a player moves without declaring a turnaround, the diver must keep moving further away from the submarine.

3. ROLL DICE AND MOVE.

Throw both dice, and move once on the trail per point. You must move your diver the full value of the roll, unless you reach the end of the trail. If that happens, you stop on the last part of the trail and lose any excess movement points.

   When returning to the submarine, you cannot enter the submarine without treasure. You’ll be forced to wait on the trail, just outside the submarine, until that whole diving round ends. So plan your return carefully.

   Divers who return to the submarine stay there for the rest of the diving round. They don’t cost the team any battery power, however.

   All divers must reduce their movement by one point for every treasure chip carried, to a minimum of zero movement.

   When you pass over another diver, ignore the cost in movement to pass that point on the trail. If your move ends on another diver, scoot past that diver to the next spot on the trail. This costs no extra movement. Divers never share spots on the trail with other divers.

   With movement resolved, search for treasure…

   Unless…all divers returned to the submarine. End the diving round, in that case. If this is round three, the game ends.

4. TIME TO SEARCH FOR TREASURE.

DO NOTHING. When you end your move on a treasure chip, your diver has the option of picking that chip up. But you don’t have to pick up a chip. If you choose to do nothing, your turn is over.

GRAB TREASURE. If you decide to take the treasure chip, remove it from the trail. Keep it near you, away from the trail. DO NOT TURN TREASURE OVER. Fill the gap in the trail with one of the round chips marked X, and place your diver on that spot.

   Divers can carry several treasure chips. Remember that each heavy treasure chip costs one movement point, down to a minimum of zero movement.

   Carried chips force the battery power down, representing the passage of time looking for treasure as well as carrying that treasure carefully. Time spent = drained batteries.

DROP TREASURE. If you end your move on a round chip, you may drop one treasure chip on that space. Move the round chip back into the general supply.

With treasure ignored, grabbed, or dropped, your turn is over and play passes to the next diver if the batteries are still working. Repeat the turn steps for each player until the diving round ends.

5. ARE THE BATTERIES DEAD?

If the battery indicator shows no battery power, the submarine is forced to surface on the very last glimmer of energy. End the diving round. If this is round three, the game ends.

ENDING THE DIVING ROUND.

A round ends once all divers are back inside the submarine, or when there’s no battery power left when checking to see if the batteries are dead. Make the following adjustments…

Divers who made it back to the submarine flip their hoarded treasure chips over to reveal the loot they’ll take to the bank. This loot is claimed from the sea, and doesn’t return to the trail.

The divers who failed to return to the submarine must drop all the treasure chips they gathered. Start with the diver nearest the end of the trail. That diver drops treasure chips past the very end of the trail, in stacks of three, until all chips are dropped.

   Then the next player nearest the end of the trail repeats the process, adding to the piles so that each pile has three chips at most.

   In later rounds, stacks of chips count as one chip for carrying purposes, one chip for battery drainage while carried, and as individual chips when counting up treasure points at the end of a diving round.

   It’s possible to add dropped chips to piles that settled in earlier diving rounds. Keep adding chips to those piles, so that all treasure piles past the trail’s end are topped up to three chips apiece.

   (Dan Diver drops one treasure chip at the end of diving round one. Then Dan drops another chip on round two, and it settles on top of the lone chip from round one.)

All X-marked chips are removed from the trail. Return them to the general supply. Move treasure chips up, to fill in gaps and tidy the trail.

STARTING A NEW DIVING ROUND.

It’s time for another expedition in the deep sea. Reset the battery indicator to 25. Determine a new first player. If all divers returned to the submarine, the first player is the diver who was last in through the hatch. But if some divers didn’t make it back, the diver nearest the end of the trail becomes the new first player.

   All divers now scurry back at the very last moment, and prepare to hunt for treasure until the game ends.

   Place all divers in the submarine if they aren’t already there, and begin round two or round three.

ENDING THE GAME.

The game ends with the close of the third diving round – when all divers return to the submarine, or once the battery power runs out when checking to see if the batteries are dead.

   Add up the treasure chips.

   The player with the highest score wins, and takes the most loot back to the bank. In the event of a tie, the tied player with the greater number of high-level treasure chips will win the game. If that check results in a tie, players share victory.

   A level four chip, with four dots, is worth more than multiple treasure chips with three dots, and so on, when determining tiebreakers.

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After seeing an ocean swirling with confusion online, I took a stab at clearing up the rules. The main thing I killed off was the idea that oxygen dwindled as the game went on.
   It was easier to say the submarine’s batteries were fading. No one quite bought into the idea that the divers somehow shared a communal air-supply, whether inside or outside the submarine, in the original rules.
   With the power gone, players check to see who becomes the new first player, and then all divers scramble back aboard and surface. Divers send treasure ashore. Batteries recharge. Everyone dives again. No one dies.
   Online, there was an argument that players caught outside the submarine stayed out for the start of the next diving round.
   That idea generates many problems. For example, a diver outside the submarine, sitting on a round X-marked counter, suddenly has that counter whisked away at the conclusion of a diving round. Where to place the diver, then? No...
   For smooth easy game-flow, all divers start a new round inside the submarine, with the batteries recharged.
   In reworking an original ruleset, I endeavoured to stick as closely to the spirit of the game as possible. It isn't easy, writing rulebooks for games - especially short ones. I hope I managed to stick to that original spirit by using a slight electrical tweak, without breaking the game.