The undersea Kadath mining station has gone dark..you and your team of investigators are being sent to find out what’s wrong. What you encounter pushes you the very edge of madness. Creatures from your worst nightmares have taken over the station, they not only attack and tear the body apart but rip at what fragile sanity you have left..can you and the team put an end to it all and send them back to whatever hell they crawled out of as well as avoid the real horrors of being drowned alive at the depths of the ocean?
Deep Madness, from Dimension Games, is a 1-6 player cooperative science fiction horror game where players are modern-day investigators sent to uncover the mystery of the deep-sea mining facility Kadath station. It is a blending of the horror of Lovecraft with the tension of being trapped at the ocean floor, fighting to stay alive from the creatures as well as being drowned alive. This is not an easy game, it will beat you up severely, but the reward of overcoming all the challenges thrown at you, make it an exciting and rewarding gaming experience.
To start, select one of the scenarios you wish to play. Follow the instructions for getting the tiles, counters, and room effects and create the map. Take the appropriate room and devour cards and shuffle them. Select the monsters you wish to face and take their cards to create the action row and their matching set of spawn cards. Shuffle the spawn cards to create the spawn deck. Next take the madness, consciousness, and the equipment cards; shuffling each to create three individual decks. Based on the player count, select the number of investigators, taking their character card, activation card, oxygen dial, and any starting equipment. Follow the scenario instructions to create the devour track and place the devour mark on the first space. Take the activtation cards and the monster cards and create the action row, placing the activation token on the first investigator card. Set aside all the sanity, damage, and additional tokens. Take the spawn-devoured markers and place them in a bag or container to be drawn from randomly. Finally, take a miniature for each active investigator and place them in the starting location.
Deep Madness is played in a series of rounds and each round consists of four phases; Devour phase, Spawn phase, Activation phase and Refresh phase. In the devour phase, players take the devour marker and advance it along the devour track. The Devour track consists of symbols that indicate what action to take during that round. Either a room is devoured or a special symbol will indicate a specific scenario-based action to follow. When a room is devoured, look at the top room on the room deck and complete the following: Turn the matching room tile over to it’s devoured side. Players then choose what room to place a spawn token on. Draw from the spawn token bag and place a marker in each remaining room on the tile. These markers indicate special conditions that occur in that room. Take the devoured room card and place it face-up on top of the devoured deck.
Moving on to the Spawn phase, draw the top spawn card from the spawn deck, and place the appropriate number of monsters in the devoured room. Next, based on the number of spawns, indicated on the devour track, continue to draw that number of spawn cards and spawn monsters in the next revealed room from the devour deck. After spawning a monster in a devoured room take the monster spawn card and add it to the spawn discard pile. Continue to spawn monsters from the devour deck until all the monsters required have been spawned. Once the correct number of monsters have been spawned, move on to the Activation phase.
This is where the players and monsters will take actions. Starting with the leftmost investigator and alternating from investigator to monster, each will activate in turn order until all have been activated. Each investigator may take 3 actions on their turn. They can move, attack, search, trade, rest, lock/unlock hatch, component, or pass.
To move, an investigator may move one space. Take note, if moving to a flooded room, reduce your oxygen by 1 on your oxygen dial for every flooded room you move to or remain in at the end of your turn. It is important to track your oxygen, as any oxygen lost below 1 will result in taking damage until you eventually will drown. Also, a player may move through a locked hatch without penalty, just remove the locked hatch counter and move as normal. Players may also move away from monsters based on their escape vs the trap level of the monsters. If a player’s escape is greater than a monsters trap. they can freely leave the space with the monster, otherwise, they must remain.
Investigators attack a monster using either a ranged or melee weapon. To make an attack, take a number of dice based on the weapon’s card and roll them. Each weapon will indicate the number of dice to roll, the range, what you need to hit, and the amount of damage it inflicts. To make a ranged attack determine first if you are in range and you have a line of sight to your target. Count the number of rooms away to the target to determine the range. An investigator has a clear line of sight to a monster if the target is not behind a closed hatch or both the investigator and target are not blocked by a flooded room. If the die roll is equal to or above the weapons succeess number, deal the appropriate number of damage points based on the number of successes rolled.
Each monster has a resistance level, and if the damage exceeds both the monster’s resistance and health, that monster is killed. When a monster is killed, an investigator may endure madness.
Each investigator has a sanity level; this is the amount of sanity tokens they can spend to assist them. For example, a player may reroll a die by spending sanity, and they can do this up to their sanity level. Using sanity is a great way to help but it comes at a cost if you defeat a monster and take madness. You will want to avoid getting madness cards at any cost, they usually result in negative effects that can impact your ability to succeed in the mission.
An investigator loses one point of sanity for every point of madness inflicted on them. This is based on the monster’s horror level. If an investigator ever has 3 points of madness, discard the tokens and draw a madness card. However, if there is any remaining sanity after defeating a monster, the player draws a consciousness card instead.
To perform a search, draw the top card of the search deck. The search deck consists of items, weapons, and abilities. An investigator may only perform one search per round, and may only carry 4 search items at a time. A rest action allows an investigator to discard all sanity tokens from their character. In addition, when a player ends their turn in a non-flooded room, they can return their oxygen back to full.
An investigator may lock a hatch by placing a locked hatch standee on its space. An investigator may also remove a broken hatch during a hatch action.
Any investigator in the same space with another may trade any number of search cards when performing a trade action. Finally, an investigator may choose to pass. Once they have passed, they may not perform any other actions that round.
A monster activates based on the specific set of actions it has on its card. A monster will perform all their actions and do so in the exact order that is on their card. A monster’s actions include move, attack, or special. A monster will move one space towards the closest investigator. If the closest is behind a locked hatch, the monster will attempt to break the lock. Roll only 2 dice and if the number of successes is equal to or greater than the monster’s horror, the door remains locked and the monster ends its move. A monster will remain in its space when in the same space as an investigator. A monster will attack and do damage based on its card. When attacking, an investigator rolls 2 dice and reduces 1 point of damage for each success. For every point above that, the investigator takes 1 wound. Each monster has a special action indicated on their card. In addition, some monsters have additional effects when they are in devoured rooms.
Play continues alternating between investigators and monsters until all have taken actions along the action track.
The final phase in a round is the refresh phase. Take the lead investigator along the action track, move them to the end and advance all other investigators forward. Keep all monsters in the same order. Complete any other end of round tasks. Start the next devour phase.
The game continues until either the investigators run out of time, one investigator dies or they complete the scenario objectives and win.
Deep Madness was a Kickstarter exclusive, and can only be found in the third-party market, which can be challenging, but if this type of game is one you enjoy, I highly recommend trying to find it. On first look, it seems like one of the many overpriced Kickstarter games with tons of miniatures and very little else. Deep Madness is an exception, underneath all the extra goodies, is a solid game with clever mechanics that plays clean and smooth. It will offer hours of entertainment as it has fairly high replayability.
Components are very high quality, detailed miniatures, good cardboard for the cards and the tiles, counters are a good thickness. I think the quality is high and at the level once would expect for this type of game.
I enjoy the Lovecraft horror games, but most of them take place in the late ’20s through ’40s. Deep Madness is one of the only ones that take this type of occultic horror and brings it to modern times. It is really satisfying to me to take a modern assault rifle against one of these creatures. Deep Madness also adds the tension of claustrophobia, being set in a facility at the bottom of the ocean and adds the additional risk of literally being drowned. I like that kind of tension, and this game brings that to the table.
While it may be a challenge to find at a reasonable price, for horror fans, it is one that I believe will be a great addition and provide hours of high tension gaming enjoyment.
Written by Ed Carter
