Deep Sea Adventure Boost revamps the original with refined components and new dice mechanics. The result is a game far more strategic than a box this small has any right to be.
Diving on a Budget
The premise of Deep Sea Adventure is simple. You’re divers hunting for treasure. Due to limited funds, you’ve all chipped in to rent a submarine. The problem? You’re also sharing the same air supply, creating an excellent blend of cooperation and competition.
Inside the tiny box you’ll find a submarine board used to track the group’s oxygen. Each player chooses a meeple and a briefcase for storing tokens, before setting up the dive itself. Tokens are shuffled and laid out in a descending path, starting with light blue and ending with dark blue.
It’s an accessible design too. Players who struggle with colour differentiation will appreciate that the tiles are also different shapes, making setup easier while giving the game a lovely table presence. Best of all, setup takes barely a minute.
Into the Deep
Played over three rounds, players roll three dice and choose two of them to move with. On every turn you must decide whether to continue diving deeper or head back to safety. Once you move, you can either do nothing, collect a token, or put one back.
The real tension comes from how tokens affect both movement and oxygen. When a player takes a token, they replace it with a cross marker. From then on, every token they carry reduces the group’s air supply and their movement.
Adding to the pressure is the fact that values remain hidden until the end of the game. You know the dark blue tokens are better, but you never know exactly how good. Every dive becomes a gamble built on greed, panic, and just enough optimism to get you stranded at the bottom of the ocean.
This leads to plenty of “I can’t believe you just did that” moments at the table. I’ve lost count of the rounds where somebody dives too deep. I immediately turn back, boost, and grab a token on the way out just to speed up the oxygen drain. If I’m not getting the points, neither are they.
Sadly, not everyone makes it back to the submarine, whether through poor planning or outright sabotage. If players fail, they must return all collected tokens to the end of the chain. These stacks can then be collected in later rounds and, crucially, stacked tokens only count as one for movement penalties. This creates tempting high-risk targets that everyone at the table will be eyeing up.
To boost or not to boost
The biggest addition in this new version is the dice system. The original game used two evenly weighted dice, but Boost introduces three uneven dice that make every roll feel far less predictable.
Most turns still involve choosing two dice, but now players can “boost” by spending one oxygen to use all three. That extra movement can help you dive deeper, escape with more treasure, or deliberately drain the shared oxygen supply to ruin someone else’s plans. It’s wonderfully mean spirited in the best possible way.
One of the few issues with the original game was that experienced groups could eventually “solve” it. Once everyone understood the optimal timing for turning back, rounds could start feeling repetitive. Boost fixes this. The extra die encourages riskier decisions because there’s always the temptation of a huge roll.
“What if I roll an 8?”
That possibility alone changes how boldly people play.
The boost mechanic also creates great endgame moments. When only two divers remain underwater, spending oxygen just to ruin your opponent’s escape suddenly feels justified. It’s tactical, competitive, and exactly the kind of chaos a push your luck game thrives on.
Final Thoughts
Deep Sea Adventure Boost feels like the version the original game was always building towards. The new dice and boost mechanic add just enough to make every dive feel tense, greedy, and unpredictable.
The extra die constantly lures players into overcommitting. Everyone thinks they can grab one more token and still make it back to the submarine. Usually, somebody ends up stranded underwater clutching treasure while the rest of the table gloats.
Luck still plays a big role, and that doesn’t disappear in Boost. If anything, the uneven dice create even swingier outcomes than the original. You’ll roll plenty of blanks and ones at the worst possible moments. Thankfully, the box still includes the original pine dice for anyone feeling nostalgic.
Boost also does little to fix the scaling issues. At two players, the game still feels like a slow game of chicken. Movement is less dynamic as there are fewer opportunities to leapfrog other divers. Thankfully, there are some excellent house rules on BGG that help smooth things out.
Even so, this version remains portable, easy to teach, and consistently entertaining. At around 30 minutes per game, it’s easy to end up playing several dives in a row.
The submarine is ready.
Just try not to waste all the oxygen.
About the author:
Sophie is a gamer, blogger, podcaster, and book lover with a passion for solo narrative video games. When she's not immersed in games or writing, she's probably out hiking. Her favourite board games feature worker placement, nature themes, and smart tableau-building mechanics
