Designers:  Josh Cappel (Dungeons and Dragons: Rock Paper Wizard, Wasabi!, Wreck Raiders), Daryl Chow (The Artemis Project, Overbooked, Remember Our Trip)

Artist: Dominik Mayer (Concordia, Concordia Venus, Hadara)

Publisher:  Burnt Island Games (Endeavor: Age of Sail, In the Hall of the Mountain King)

Genre/Mechanisms: adventure, end game bonuses, hand management, pick-up and deliver, set collection

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, In Too Deep is already fully-funded. Pledges currently total almost 3x the initial funding goal with less than 3 days to go on the campaign.

Player Count: 1-4

Solo Mode: yes

Complexity: medium-light

Risk: medium-low

What It’s About: “Hack into criminal minds in the undercover operation of a lifetime. Save the city without losing your soul. Draft characters and spend actions to complete objectives and collect sets.”

How It Works: “It is the year 2087. A global criminal organization known as the Syndicate has set its sights on New Dawn City, a crumbling former utopia that is the perfect target for its network of cyber-enhanced underlings. You work for a secret agency devoted to defeating the Syndicate, and your scientists have finally discovered a way to turn the Syndicate’s advantages against them. Using an experimental technology, your team can infiltrate the minds of Syndicate criminals, observing and even influencing their activities as you gain more skill. To gather intel on Syndicate methods, and evidence to foil their final plot, you’ll need to manipulate their operatives as they commit crimes around the city… but the more dangerous you allow them to be, the more corrupted you may become! You’ll have to balance your approach. Too safe and you risk losing the city. Too reckless and you risk losing your soul.”

“In Too Deep plays in turns. Players spend their turns gaining and improving control over the Syndicate criminals, and putting things in place for them to commit crimes in several nefarious story-lines. The goal is to get close to the Syndicate, gather valuable Intel on their general activities, and piece together Evidence of both the Final Plot and the Chapters that lead up to it. The more a player pushes their moral boundaries along the way, the more Dilemmas they will accumulate. Dilemmas offer tempting rewards, but also dangerous corruption.”

“On a player’s turn, they will complete the following five steps in order. 1) Hook. To hook a criminal, take any criminal tag (from the pool or from another player’s mat), and place it on the top-most empty hook slot of your player mat. If you take from another player, you must pay them 1 Intel (if you have zero Intel, the player gains 1 Intel from the supply instead).”

“2) Gain Grip. Gain 1 Grip with each of your hooked criminals, sliding each Grip disc one space to the right on the Grip track.”

“3) Perform Actions. You have 2 actions to spend on your turn. All of the actions below may be performed with any criminal you are currently hooked into. You may split your actions among your hooked criminals however you wish. Possible actions include: Move, Pick Up an Item, Use a Zone Power, Use a Criminal Skill, and Gain 1 Grip.”

“4) Complete a Story Crime. If the board state meets the conditions of a Story Crime in your hand and any prerequisite crimes have been completed in its story-line, you may complete one Story Crime. There are a few steps to completing a Story Crime: Check Prerequisites, Confirm the Criteria, Follow the Red Text, Pick Your Approach, Resolve Your Approach, Display the Crime, and Unhook from all of your Criminals.”

“5) Ditch and Draw Cards. You may discard any number of Crime cards (Side and/or Story) from your hand, returning them to the bottom of their relevant decks. Then, if you don’t have at least one Side Crime and at least one Story Crime in hand, you may draw cards to reach those minimums. When drawing a Story Crime, you may draw from any level deck you wish.”

“The game is divided into three Chapters. At the end of each Chapter (when a pool of evidence tokens runs out), players will earn rewards or penalties for how well they contributed to the Chapter’s investigation. Each player then secretly stores half of the Dilemmas they’ve gathered, trying to strike a balance between the rewards they desire and the amount of corruption they are willing to risk. At the end of the game, the least-corrupt player earns a bonus. The most-corrupt player has gone In Too Deep, and will suffer a major penalty if the final plot was foiled. All players score Intel for their Grip progress, Evidence collections, and other rewards from their Dilemmas, then the player with the highest score wins. In the event of a tie, the tied player with lower total corruption is the winner.”

Comparisons: What makes In Too Deep so unique is its combination of commonly-used NPC’s and area control mechanics, while also including narrative, storyline-themed missions. Yet this is not a narrative game, with players working together to complete a storyline or adventure together; it instead remains a competitive game where players are trying to score more points than their opponents. In that sense, it resembles games like Above and Below, Near and Far, and Vindication– competitive games that also make use of narrative and story-themed elements in regard to its player/characters.

What Should I Pledge?:
$49 In Too Deep Retail Game: a copy of the retail version of the game with all applicable “Secret Reveals” and stretch goals.
$60 In Too Deep Kickstarter Game: a copy of the Kickstarter version of the game with all applicable “Secret Reveals” and stretch goals. In general, the Kickstarter version of the game comes with miniatures to replace the retail version’s cardboard standees.

Add-Ons:
$20 Burnt Island Token Racks (set of 5); also available individually at $5 each

KS Exclusives
The miniatures, their bases, and any related “Secret Reveals” and stretch goals are a part of the Kickstarter Exclusive version of the game.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S., you’re looking at $60 for the Kickstarter Game and $13 in shipping for a total of $73. If you’re also pledging for a set of 5 Token Racks, then your final total will be close to $93.

In Too Deep completes its Kickstarter on Thursday, October 8th and tentatively ships in September 2021.