Designed by: Mike Elliott
Clearly inspired by the movie Tremors, Terror Below sees you trapped in a dusty valley whilst horrifying man-eating worms chew their way beneath the ground, occasionally bursting to the surface, to attack! And also, lay eggs.
Players are equipped with a leader, a weapon and an item. Everyone’s goal is the same – reach 20 points before anyone else does (-and try not to die) How do you get points? By collecting the aforementioned eggs and delivering them to various locations around the valley. You can also get points by destroying worms: outside of the eggs, nobody likes them.
The board is set up with three such monsters at large, and more to come. There’s also a lot of rubble, caused by the seismic ruptures when the worms emerge on the surface. You have a hand of three vehicle cards, and when your turn comes you simply choose one of these to play, placing it beneath any of the current worm cards at the bottom of the board, and following three easy steps:
Distract the worm: each vehicle card shows where to move the target token (representing the worm’s current subterranean location)
Take actions – each vehicle card gives you a number of them, from the colossal 18-wheeler (7!) to the somewhat unassuming and not strictly vehicular boots.
Special ability – if the card had a special ability, it must activate at the end of your turn. You then refill your hand to three vehicle cards.
The actions, then, are the meat of the game. You use them to move, collect eggs, deliver eggs, and remove rubble. This last one may seem oddly cosmetically-minded considering all the imminent peril, but removing three rubble lets you get another weapon or item, and this can be crucial, because…
After each players turn worms may attack if a certain number of vehicle cards have accrued beneath them on the board. This means more eggs, more rubble, and the potential loss of your leader if you’re caught in any affected area – you have two more leaders, but losing the third isn’t good. But being caught can be good, because if you’re suitably equipped you can destroy the worm – not only saving yourself, but gathering a point or more in the process. A new worm card appears, and the target token gets placed in a new location.
Some items are used in worm attacks, some are used at a time of your choosing. All have a very easily-understood bit of text explaining them. Extra points can be claimed from the bounty cards, which reward you for either destroying worms, or delivering a particular colour egg to a specific location. Lastly, watch out for the Queen worms: there are three of them in the worm deck, and they cause havoc!
The moment someone hits 20 points, they win. Or, if the worms knock out a player by killing their third leader, the player with the most points at that moment wins instead.
Plenty from the worms. But also players can passive-aggressively get after each other too, by triggering a worm attack on someone low on weapons, for instance. That underhandedness is certainly there... but it's not the game's predominant feature.
Low.
Low. Play a card, spend the actions. Bear the bounties in mind for additional points, but the general thrust of the game is run around grabbing eggs and selling them. It's like extreme dairy farming.
The worms come out in different ways, as do the weapons and items. Different leader cards also have different special abilities, and there are scenario rules for 1 or 2 player games.
1-5
Players
10+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
A really nicely presented, well-designed, not-too-onerous-on-the-rules family game. It comes with a bunch of worm standees, and it first it seems odd that they have no part to play other than hanging around being thematically resonant backdrops. Worms on the board are always represented by the target token, and it took me a little while to get my head around the slight abstraction, but basically they remain underground throughout, excepting the fleeting moment they attack. After that they're gone - I assume, as earth-dwelling invertebrate, you've no desire to lie around in the sun. Collecting rubble to exchange for weapons and tools is a bit of a stretch thematically, but it does make a kind of sense that you'd be rewarded for keeping the roads clear, even just so people can drive up and down them screaming in horror. The only drawback for me is the amount of procedure involved: those worms spring up often, and every occasion means adding eggs and rubble, dealing with attacks, discarding cards, drawing new worm and moving the target token. That's a little bit fiddly for an otherwise fast-moving game, but it's the only real criticism from me.