Play as cyberpunk detectives

In Too Deep has a fascinating concept. 🕵️ You play as detectives, but not just like any ordinary agency. With a new technology you are able to hack 💽 into the cybernetic implants of criminals and control them, to gather evidence and foil the plans of the evil Syndicate. This is of course quite a morally gray zone, as you yourself will practically perform crimes so you can build your case against the Syndicate. But they would do crimes anyway, you are only nudging them in a specific direction - so it's okay right? Right? 😶😬

This theme is nicely integrated into the game. 😊 As players hook into criminals and complete crimes, you track multiple “crime-storylines” to get to their finale. Every time you complete a crime card you can choose rewards, either going a more covert route or a more brutal and blunt one, and get rewards accordingly. You will get Dilemma cards too - with nice bonuses but also a with corruption value, and whoever goes too deep and corrupts 👹 themselves the most will lose valuable points in the end. 

That said (and I know this will be a paradox), this is also one of the most abstract euro games. But a super thematic abstract game. 😅 Basically, to complete crime cards you have to get criminals and items into the correct position/configuration by moving them around the central rondel. So you use your actions to gain control of the shared characters and carry item tokens around, trying to complete the required patterns. This is a very interesting concept: you don’t actually have your own character, you’ll just temporarily hook into them for a few turns and can lose access any time.

A big part of the fun are the criminal characters themselves. 👉There are 10 of them, and you only use 5-6 in a game, and they each have unique special abilities: like the Jumper that can jump to the opposite tile of the rondel, or the Dronejack that can move items on adjacent tiles. To use these abilities you have to improve your Grip with the criminals though, by using them often.

I simply love the premise of the game and the cyberpunk aesthetics. 😊 Well, and it has a rondel as well! 😁