Deep Regrets Preview

June 24, 2024

3,137

“Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.” Lovecraft knew how to describe horrible things from the deep as this passage from Dagon shows, but what happens when you want to play in that world? Up until now your best options were videogames like Dredge or Dave the Diver, but now you can get the same experience around a table! Deep Regrets from Judson Cowan’s Tettix Games is a game about fishing and other things…

“Instead of the cross, the Albatross around my neck was hung”

Thalassophopia – a fear of deep waters. Whether it’s down to a genetic disposition to not be dragged into the inky-black fathoms beneath, or because we saw Jaws when we were kids and now check the bath for sharks, plenty of us have an innate ‘nope’ reaction to deep water. Writers have always written about the real or imagined horrors in the water, from Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Jules Vernes’ 20000 Leagues Under the Sea (you really should check out Nemo’s War), through to the likes of H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories like the one I mentioned above, Dagon.

We can’t see what’s down there, so it’s easy to build a sense of unease and excitement about throwing a hook and line over the side of a boat and seeing what bites. Deep Regrets borrows this concept and throws a bucket of slimy chum into its churning waters. The idea is relatively simple. In each round of the game you either go out fishing on your little boat or stay at port to sell your catches and buy upgrades for your fishing business.

some of the fish cards — Fair fish cards, as opposed to the foul things you’ll also dredge up.

To perform actions you need to roll the wonderfully cute wooden D4 buoy dice and choose how to spend them. Moving into deeper water costs dice. Once you choose a shoal on the main board you flip the top card to see what “fish” is on offer and then try to land it by spending dice of its value. The rods and reels you can buy at port make your job easier with all sorts of cunning effects. The Rod of the Infinite for example lets you peek at the top three fish cards in a shoal deck and put them back in any order before you reveal one.

So far, so laissez-faire. Catch nice little fish and sell them at the market. It’s not just fish down there though, there are other things. Horrible things. Unspeakable things. Catching them will surely only lead to madness and compound your life’s regrets, and nobody wants that.

Or do they?

“I think I went mad then”

The things you catch in Deep Regrets fall into one of two categories: fair or foul. When you land a foul creature you draw regret cards, cards which represent the accumulated parts of a life lived badly. Regrets have different levels, ranging from “I lost my favourite sock”, right up to “Partook of human flesh”. The more regrets you collect, the greater your slip into madness. Don’t worry though, it’s not all bad.

close-up of a deep regrets player board — Look at those adorable buoy dice! And a player board that doesn’t need its own table.

The more regret cards you collect, the more your foul catches are worth when you return to port to do business. On the flip side of the coin, however, the value of your fair catches decreases. You see, you can make plenty of money by just landing and selling the nice, non-mutant fish that people actually want, where your lack of madness results in higher prices for fair catches. So why would you ever want to gain regrets and increase your madness?

This is one of my favourite parts of the game. In a nod to something more akin to an off-beat RPG, Judson nudges us towards madness. The higher your madness level, the more dice you can have at your disposal, which means deeper fishing and bigger fishes. It means more money, and more upgrades. It means you can mount those really valuable catches in your prized mounting slots above your board to multiply their worth at the end of the game. in fact if you can get your cube to the bottom of the madness track you even get a discount on upgrades. I guess the shopkeepers will do anything to get you out of their place of business as fast as they can, you weirdo.

Deep Regrets is a game of managing your madness rather than avoiding it. The only penalty you’re looking at for going completely hatstand is losing a mounted fish if you have the most regret at the end of the game.

Light in the darkness

This game is a lot of fun, let’s just get that out there right now. What it does brilliantly is to build the game around a lightweight rules framework. Nothing in Deep Regrets is complicated. Your actions are simple. It’s easy to teach. You’ll have new players up and running in a few minutes, and that’s perfect for the sort of person that’s likely to pick up a copy. Thanks to Judson’s amazing illustrations (check out the reviews I did for his previous game, Hideous Abomination), this is a game which is going to appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike. Everything about the game screams approachable, which is precisely what it needs.

The rulebook is excellent. Clearly laid out with good examples and plenty of lore and flavour text. It’s not even called a rulebook, it’s “The Angler’s Guide to Fishing”, which I love. Deep Regrets has clearly been through a ton of playtesting and iteration, and it shows. At one point with my preview copy I wanted clarification over the wording on a card. I thought it was a bit ambiguous so me being me, I shot Judson an email asking for clarification. I had to retract the email a couple of minutes later when I turned to the back of the book and found the appendix detailing exactly what I’d asked.

Stuff like this matters. It’s not even the final product yet, and it’s already a long way ahead of most prototypes I’m given, and better than plenty of final, retail productions. If the final version follows suit you’re going to be getting a primo product for your pounds.

The solo and co-op mode is also great. You’re still trying to catch whatever’s out there, but this time you have a chart and your upgrades persist through multiple playthroughs. Trying to catch everything and to complete the list is something which appeals to the lockdown Animal Crossing perfectionist in me.

Final thoughts

Deep Regrets is a blast. I was one of those bombarded with Facebook advertising for it a little while back, and it worked. I love the games I mentioned in my opening salvo, especially Dredge, and this game really hooks into (forgive me) that same feeling. The same ‘cosy port town meets unimaginable horrors from the deep’ aesthetic that it delivers in spades.

I’ve lauded the artwork before, but it’s worth distinguishing that from the graphic design. The backs of the shoal cards for example, at first glance all look the same, but you’ll soon notice that the shadows in the water on each are different sizes, alluding to the size – and therefore the difficulty in catching – whatever’s on the other side. Little touches like this and the iconography throughout are just great.

deep regrets in play on a table — It’s always a treat when a game fits on a normal table, and Deep Regrets certainly does.

Don’t expect a game with deep, complex layers of nuance. It’s a game of flip a card, catch the fish, decide what to do with it, but it excels at it. This is a game you could happily teach to your non-gamer friends and they’d have a great time with it. If your group’s idea of oceanic strategy perfection is Dominant Species: Marine, you might be left wanting with Deep Regrets. But it’s not a game aimed at hardcore Euro nerds like myself. It’s a game aimed at everyone, which hey, includes me.

Yes, there’s luck involved. You roll dice to do everything. You flip cards with no way of knowing what’s on the other side. But that’s the soul of the game. There are ways to mitigate the luck through upgrades and things you dredge up from the ocean floor, and that’s where the strategy comes in. It’s not deterministic, but it’s a lot of fun, and you’ll be done in an hour and a half, leaving behind some belly laughs and some interesting life stories if you choose to craft a narrative from your regret cards.

I’m hopelessly biased in this one I’m sure. I love the setting. I love the artwork. I love Judson’s work ethic and the amount of love poured into this game, and the fun I’ve gotten from it. Make of that what you will, but I’ve no hesitation in recommending Deep Regrets when it launches on Kickstarter on July 1st.

Preview copy kindly provided by Tettix Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own. I also acknowledge that I’ve made jokes of ‘madness’ in this piece. As a supporter of mental health wellbeing, and someone who openly suffers with mental health problems, I hope this is taken in the manner in which it’s meant.