Endeavor Deep Sea

A visually appealing and engaging game with a healthy element of interaction and varied play, Endeavor Deep Sea is a worthy game to any collection.

Essence of gameplay

In Endeavor Deep Sea you play the team leader of an independent research institute. Your objective is to initiate exploration of the ocean, to develop sustainable projects and protect marine life through conservation. Throughout the game you will take actions to explore, publish research, recruit new specialists and establish new projects. At the end of the game, your achievements are reflected in victory points to establish who has been the most successful.

Key features

One of the key features of this game are the player boards. These show your resource or progress tracks in a sense and ultimately contribute to your victory points score. The four tracks show your ability to recruit specialists, your ability to gather action tokens, your ability to recover actions or refreshing your specialists and finally the quality of your submersibles in terms of both speed and the depth they can travel.

Another key feature are the ocean tiles. These are organised into decks of different depths and offer scoring opportunities. The tiles look good and have clear icons although it takes a little getting used to remembering at a glance what you can do.

Turn sequence

The player board also acts as a good aide memoire for the player turn sequence as to begin with each player in turn can recruit based on the progress of the dark orange / brown track. You’ll want to increase progress not only to unlock victory points, but also to access higher grade specialists.

The next track coloured green allows you to collect action tokens. These are required for specialists to carry out actions. You always need one to activate a specialist and some actions require an additional token to be placed on an ocean tile. There are also publish research opportunities which allow you to collect a corresponding card if you have acquired sufficient research tokens. I mention this here because there are some cards that allow you to take an action without using a specialist.

Then the yellow track allows you to regain token already spent which is vital to free up specialist actions. These then are three administrative actions to take before the round proper.

Once every player has completed their admin, each player in order takes an action. It may be that some specialists are blocked if you were unable to take back sufficient action tokens, so you will need to choose wisely which actions you want to free up if this is the case.

Actions

Although there is a limited number of available actions, namely diving, sonar, publish, travel and conversation project, what actions you take will in part be influenced by the availability of action spaces, the suitability of your subs to travel further and deeper and your available specialist actions. I do find this quite nice. The options are limited, but there is usually something useful to do and the asymmetry in the game works well.

As you travel, you’ll see icons on ocean card depicted a variety of things including what bonus you get for discovering the tile via sonar and for travelling to the site, what research can be carried out there as well as the opportunities for diving and conservation. This is how you improve your submarine ability via advancing on the blue track on your player board. It is of course a good idea to advance as much as you can along all four tracks, and whilst a little fortune is needed at the right time, getting the ability to collect or recover more action tokens and improving your sub are ones to seek as otherwise this will seriously hinder you as the game progresses especially if your opponents can travel further and deeper and benefit from tiles you simply cannot access. Improving the submarine at least to benefit from a second vessel is vital. Equally, having a range of possible actions is also useful and it is a good idea to keep options open during a round. It is possible your plans may fail if the options available become used up by an opponent.

We found that whilst some players tended to favour one option over another, there were opportunities to carry out all options during the course of the game. There are bonus points to be awarded based on who is dominant in research, sonar and conservation so you will need to factor that in to your actions.

Tactics

In the first few turns we have found that improving the ability to collect and recover action tokens very useful as it expands your options. It not always clear what other players are planning, but you do need to keep your eyes on your opponents in order to see what opportunities you can exploit or to be mindful of what bonus points are being sought. Improving the submarine becomes important and the ability to recruit better specialists are also very important as the game progresses. Since tile action spaces and diving tokens are limited, you will need to join the party where you can to avoid missing out. The diving tokens usually give you research or another gain and publishing will not only give you a token on the board, but a card that might give you a one-off ability too or straight victory points. The game only lasts for seven rounds, so you have a limited time to act and since the game clock is easily monitored by counting the number of specialists you have, the end shouldn’t be a surprise.

Components

The components in the deluxe version are as you would expect and good quality. It does enhance gameplay, but ultimately, it’s not essential. Still, from a tactile point of view it is a nice game to play and visually enjoyable too. The card stock is nice and think and overall, the printing is good. The only issue raised with my gaming group was that during the course of the game icons can get obscured with tokens and it would help if options were more distinguishable, maybe by different colours or icon shape, but having said that, this is a minor issue and doesn’t ultimately hamper gameplay and enjoyability.

Interaction

There is good interaction in Endeavor Deep Sea, at least in terms of competition for actions. You can’t block access to other subs and there is no elimination or combat so it would appear that you don’t have any real contact with others, but throughout the game you will find a player’s actions will impact on others quite frequently.

Replayability

One aspect of the game I enjoy is the variety possible for each game. The tiles are drawn randomly and players have a say in what tile is placed when carrying out a sonar action. Each game revolves around this simple mechanic and whilst your choices in game are limited to the actions available, there is still the flexibility in what you do each turn. You may, for example, want to dive or carry out sonar, to use up the dive tokens or benefit from sonar opportunities whilst they are available and of course, what you gain is something your opponents do not.

Summary

Overall, Endeavor Deep Sea is a game I’d be happy to play again. It is a colourful, friendly game to learn and enjoy with enough depth to be replayable. Whilst the actions are limited, I always felt there were actions and it is a game where specialising in one or two actions can be a good move as much as being more flexible and going where opportunities present themselves.