Designed by: Reiner Knizia
Into the Blue is a luck-pushing game themed around divers looking for sunken treasure, where every turn you roll dice.
You’ve three rolls to dive down the board – into the deeper depths of the sea – and need consecutive numbers: 1,2 and 3 will get you to the third deepest section of the sea, and as you might expect, the deeper you go the greater the rewards. After your third roll, you can place shells at <up to> the deepest level you rolled multiplied by the number of dice you rolled of that number. Get all the way to the bottom and you instantly claim a treasure chest!
Otherwise once all shells are placed, the players with the most shells in a depth claim the rewards: but ties are broken by the next level up, leading to a semi-cascading thing of fluctuating fortunes: if you and I have tied for shells on depth 4, we compare shells at depth 3. If we tie there as well, we look at depth 2, and so on. Treasures have differing values too, so you can’t be sure who has won until everyone is back on the surface, drenched and triumphant/defeated as appropriate.
Nothing that would feel too nasty or arbitrary, but you will get bumped out of scoring positions by others.
Very low
Not much higher. There's a smidgen of tactical play and a faint whiff of basic maths.
It's fun, it's frolicsome and fast. Random elements are ensured by both dice and player decisions.
2-5
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
Into the Blue is good fun. Is it different enough from a billion other luck-pushers that it needed publication, plastic shells and plastic dice and all? - Maybe. What it has on a number of them is the fact it's so fast, and in games with large doses of luck I tend to think that's a good thing. The rolling and decanting gives you a bit of control, but keeps things swingy enough for the game to have surprises. It doesn't make me slap the table and yell Let's go again! but it's a decent game all the same, as you'd expect from this designer.