Place your bets and take a dive
Dive is a 1-4 players bidding game in which you are trying to be the first diver to reach a sacred stone lying at the bottom of the ocean. It will be released in European stores by the end of March (US availability still unknown).
On each round, five translucent ocean tiles are stacked in the middle of the table, and players can take a look at them. The first tile is entirely revealed, while the following tiles are partly obstructed by the previous ones. For each of these five levels, the players must secretly bid with their five tokens, valued from 1 to 5. These tokens are double-sided, with a regular face and a “shark” face of the same value. When bidding, players must decide on their tokens’ face for each of the levels.
The ocean tiles are then fully revealed one after the other. Some ocean tiles show a shark and some others don’t; if the side of the bidding tokens for this level matches the absence or presence of a shark, players can then compete for the benefits of the tile and continue the dive on this round. Besides the shark, ocean tiles may display a turtle or a manta; a turtle allows the player to move their pawn one step further on the diving track, while a manta allows them to move up to the next diver on the track. However, only the highest bidder on this level can claim this benefit.
At the end of the round, all players advance on the track by as many steps as the levels they have successfully dove through (that is, for all levels in a row for which they correctly predicted the absence or presence of a shark). The first player to reach the end of the track wins the game.
Additionally, each player at the beginning of the game can choose a companion that offers a one-time special ability, such as forcing the end of the programming phase or hiding part of the ocean tiles by laying a giant octopus on the stack.
In the solo mode, the player will compete against the Village Chief. Each round, one card is drawn for the Village Chief, which indicates a bidding value for each of the levels. The Village Chief never makes mistakes regarding the absence or presence of sharks. However, in the second part of the game, the Village Chief stops diving after a set level marked on the card. Not all companions can be used in the solo mode.
Those 'rounded' cards are cool. "The Village Chief never makes mistakes regarding the absence or presence of sharks," you say?
Generally, I try to avoid opponents that never make mistakes. 🙂