The Mariana Trench (Kickstarter Edition)

Board Game Geek Reviews

1. 7 out of 10

   Malkryst

   A simple enough game with very nice card art and a very compact box - I'm glad I backed it on Kickstarter.

2. 2 out of 10

   fishfleas

   Good artwork, but horrible card quality. I’ve seen decks of dollar store old maid cards with better quality. Haven’t played yet but first impression made me feel like I overpaid.

3. 4.25 out of 10

   Zeistsport

   So here are my thoughts, based on a minimum of Five SOLO plays and the ratings used are at the end.... The Mariana Trench – 2.1/5 Speed / Ease Of Set Up & Tear Down? – 3/5 Nothing to it, so as expected! Game Time? – 2/5 On the box it says 10-15 mins. For me, solo, it was 6 mins for the basic game and about 10 mins with all the expansions chucked in. Far too quick and unrewarding! Rule Book? – 3/5 Very simple game so not much is needed. The rules sheet is ok and does a job. Slightly confusing on the expansions where one has a sheet and the other has an extra card! Component Quality? – 0/5 Ok, so here’s a rating I never seriously thought I would give. Firstly there is a card (Plesiosaur) missing, which they are aware of and will be fixing at a later date and for now doesn’t affect the gameplay! Next, ALL the cards are cut slightly wrong with two opposite corners sloping in. From the base set there is in theory a counter missing (needed for the 2 player game). If you have the KS version there is a spare with the expansions if not… There is a “charge” token in the game also, which keeps changing names at varying times to “electric” or “spark” and finally the cards. They are thick, but they are also that horrible dry matte finish (like old VPG games) and are impossible to shuffle cleanly unless you sleeve them. Theme? – 3/5 I gave them the par score on this one, the theme is there I suppose! Gameplay? – 2/5 In the base “solo” you play against an AI which means the game last between 16 & 24 turns depending on the card draw as the AI’s movement is the timer. Now in some other games that’s a lot, here, your turn might be, pick up a token, turn over a card, do absolutely nothing and recharge. There is very little time to do anything, adding the expansions adds a couple of turns and some more pitfalls but otherwise it’s too short to be interesting. Replayability? – 2/5 Multiplayer I can see being a little better as there wouldn’t be such a fixed number of turns. With some work and some house rules maybe there is something in there but since I was bored after one game and had to force myself to play a few more times to confirm my suspicions, I’ll take some convincing! Value For Money? –2/5 I know it a very cheap “filler” game but with both practical and technical faults, there’s a problem here. Better for Multiplayers Keeper ???? If you’ve read this far, do I really need to answer this…….:( 5 = Out of this world, could not be better! 4 = Great !!! 3 = Average (Where any game should be) 2 = Really needs some work to come up to standard!! 1 = Disastrous 0 = Oh! The Horror!!!!!!!