G@mebox author Ralf Togler writes about the game:

Diving is an interesting, but expensive hobby. You find awesome creatures like turtles, colourful fishes, mussels and gorgous corrals down there in the ocean. But diving is not only expensive, it can be dangerous too. There are a lot of creatures that you better should avoid in the deep water. Of course, the most famous of these creatures are sharks, so you better scan your environment before you find yourself confronted with the wild animals in an element you are not familiar with.

The innovative game Dive let us feel the tension and excitement of such underwater expeditions. In the game the players dive deep into the ocean, always on the look-out for sharks. The games uses a clever concept for this. So, you are not moving meeple around a board. Instead you really have to observe the ocean visually to look out for sharks as in real live. Well, almost. But you physically investigate the water before you start to dive. This is realized by an innovative concept of transparent foils that are placed on top of each other in the central ocean board box. Five of these foils, representing 5 meters, are the maximum dive depth for every round. And the players must guess on which levels they will find sharks and where they find turtles and skates, the positive animinals for scoring victory points.

How does that work in detail? Well, all foils are transparent, so you can see through them. At the same time you also find transparent animals and underwater plants on the foils, if available. There are foils without any of the wanted animals, foils with only one of the „good“ animals, foils with sharks and foils with „good“ and „bad“ animals. And it’s the players‘ task to view the foils from above and guess on which of the next 5 foils you will find sharks and where you find the good guys.

Click on image to enlarge!

All predictions are noted on the personal player boards. Most important task is to identify the sharks, because one wrong guess ends the player’s dive expedition for that round. After all players have placed their bets, the foils are removed one by one with the players checking whether they guessed right or wrong. In the simplified version this is all you must do, gaining one victory point for every correct prediction.

But that’s only the version for the smaller children. Of course, we want to have more options and challenges, don’t we? Turtles and skate are what we are looking for. Whenever a foil is taken with such a cute animal, it helps the player with the highest bet for this foil, but of course only if he was also right in the prediction of the shark. As a result the player with the highest bet, moves one or two steps further on the scoring track, or – in case of a skate – up to the next players‘ scoring token. All players with the right shark prediction dive deeper and for them the next foil is taken and revealed. If however a player was wrong in the shark prediction, the journey ends for her or him for this round.

Click on image to enlarge!

All of this is quite unusual, maybe a little bit weird, but nevertheless a lot of fun. It’s not always easy to look through all that foils, especially if the lighting conditions become worse in the evening hours. But the rules allow you to use a torch – like the flash lamp of your smartphone – for illuminating the foils from below. There is also a solo game variant to play against an automatic diver. But the game is best for a family evening. Especially the children have a lot of fun observing the ocean foils and finding sharks, turtle and skated. Probably the game looses a little bit of its fascination after some plays, but the artwork and the general idea of the game are so remarkable, that everybody should have a try-out. And for families it’s definetly a nice game for a rainy winter weekend.

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Copyright © 2021 Ralf Togler & Frank Schulte-Kulkmann, Essen, Germany