It’s hard not to like a game that includes 100 minis of deep ones. But the rest of Innsmouth Escape is also worth liking.

A group of students from Miscatonic University is on a field trip to Innsmouth. Not a good idea., the locals considered. They’ve trapped the students and threathens to do unnamable things with them and frankly it all looks rather bleak. But what the hideous fish guyls (m/f) do not know is that one of the students is still on the loose. And he’s planning to open a can of whoop ass hoping to free (some of) the hostages and, of course, escaping the doomed town.

One player takes the role as the human and up to four other players control the fishy folks. The idea is that the human is a bit tougher with more players, but I’ll recommend that you always play with a minimum of three deep one teams – otherwise things are a bit too easy for the human player. But since the bad guys are supposed to cooperate, one player can easily control more than one team. The human player must, as mentioned above, try to get away, but first has to free hostages whereas the deep ones just try to kill that annoying human.

The board is a simple map divided into six times six squares. Some of the squares have icons showing where the human can find hostages, weapons or special event cards, and likewise the deep ones have squares that benefit them – mostly more deep ones or cards with special abilities.

In each game turn the good guy plots a secret move using his move cards. I’ll skip the precise details, but suffice to say that the deep ones usually won’t know which square he moves to, but will at times be able to guess it. The system is a bit fiddly, but works quite well and there’s ample opportunity to outwit both your opponent and yourself. Each turn will also see combat between the deep ones and our hero if they happen to be on the same square. Battles are decided using a simple roll of a normal dice, but works quite well. Especially because both sides can change the outcome – the human player by using weapons and the deep ones by using the aforementioned specal cards. But mostly the deep ones will try to use force of numbers, or, and this is important, the horrbile shoggoths. They can be summomed by sacrificing deep ones in a certain square and will deal out serious hurt if they manage to be on the same square as the human. But more importantly they block the way when the human player is planning his move and thus they become an important tool limiting the human player’s options. Unfortunately the shoggoths are nothing more than flimsy cardboard tokens, which is more of a shame since both the human and the fish guys look so nice.

So far it sounds quite simple, and though the rule book is somewhat difficult to use it really is. Actually it’s so simple that I after my first game was a bit worried that it would become too simple. But you’ll quickly learn that the game is more complicated and with more strategies than what meets the eye at first glance. For instance the human player can – instead of looking for equipment and freeing hostages – pick a more offensive style of play and try to cut of the deep ones’ supply of cards and new pawns. On the other hand the deep ones’ cards give you a lot of different options such as allowing an entire row of squares to automatically inflict wounds on the human should he land on any of them. So even though it’s not a deep game, I do believe it’ll keep being fun a while yet – especially because playing the deep ones is very different from playing the human.

Finally Some people has complained that the cards have too little original art (they use the same illustrations in both cards and on the box) and that the game is rather expensive considering what you get. Personally I feel that I got full value for the 320 DKR (65 USD) I paid*, and even though there’s not a lot of original art, I find it well done and very thematic. Furthermore it’s easy to learn, has more strategic choices than you think at first, and is – foremost of all – a lot of fun. And let’s not forget: you get 100 plastic minis of deep ones!

* Danish sales tax is 25%. So 65 USD sounds like a lot, but just to compare the retail price of Starcraft the board game in my local game store is 165 USD.