“No, don’t go that way! The horrors will get you!”
“But I have to, this way you get a chance of getting out. I’ll draw them away.”
“No you fool, we can make it out together! We can hide!”
“You know there is only a 50-50 chance of a successful hiding. And the odds of all of passing the skill check are too low. Just leave me behind.”
“I’ll come back for your unconscious body and get us all out. I promise.”
In the olden days of 2005, a delightful movie called Descent came out. It tells the tale of a group of spelunkers who decide to enter a previously unmapped cave system for the glory of exploring it. However, little do they know that the cave is home to unspeakable horrors, and during the course of the movie, they try to get out. Most of them unsuccessfully. You might be wondering what is this movie synopsis doing here but there is a reason for it. The story of Descent is basically the premise of Sub Terra.
Each player takes on the mantle of a thrill-seeking spelunker who got trapped in a cave. The options are limited, time is of the essence, the cave is huge, the exit is nowhere in sight and something is moving in the darkness.
Each round players get two action points they have to spend wisely during the Action Phase. Next comes the Horror Phase when the indescribable abominations inhabiting the cave move around. As if dealing with monsters wasn’t enough, once the horrors are done comes the Hazard Phase during which a random event card is drawn that triggers some bad cave-specific incident. Lastly, if everyone is still alive, comes the End Phase when you pass the starting caver marker.
There are several basic actions you can take during the Action Phase. You can stick your head around the corner and a reveal new tile, or you can explore which means you reveal a new tile and immediately move into it. You can also simply move to an adjacent revealed tile, or you can run through three tiles. The last basic action is healing a fellow spelunker. It is important to note that you can heal cavers who have zero health.
There are also hazard actions that are I guess hazardous? Some of them are just move actions with extra steps that cost more action points, like swimming and squeezing. This just means that special tiles that contain water or tight crawl spaces take more time to traverse. You can also dig to remove rubble to clear a passage, place a rope, or hide. Some of these require a skill check, which is determined very simply, you just roll a single die and if you get four or higher you pass. Placing a rope or hiding for example requires a die roll to succeed.
There are also loads of dangers in the cave. Horrors are dark markers on the board moving towards the closest spelunker within seven tiles during the Horror Phase. Apparently, horrors can smell people only within seven tiles, so if there is no one nearby they don’t move. If they catch someone that caver immediately becomes unconscious and loses all his/her health.
Other perils include floods, cave-ins, poisonous gas, tremors, and ledges or slides that can’t be crossed without a rope.
After a certain number of rounds, once the Hazard deck runs out, the game becomes exponentially more difficult. Once time has run out, in each additional round, players will have to perform a skill check and if they fail they are immediately devoured and removed from the game.
The character classes are very Pandemic-like in the sense that each takes certain aspects of the rules and relaxes them. For example, the climber can place ropes without a skill check, the diver can move between flooded caves, the leaders succeeds on a roll of 3, the scout is stealthy and can’t be caught by horrors.
The Good
Sub Terra is easy to learn and play, one game only takes about one hour. However, it can fit a lot in that hour.
The game is very atmospheric. I am not really sure how Sub Terra can achieve this effect because the artwork isn’t that great and the cavers are represented by little colorful meeples, but somehow the sense of urgency and desperation comes through. The game is genuinely exciting. You need to explore the cave quickly, but revealing and moving into a tile is risky, on the other hand, time is also running out, and in the end, we also want all the cavers to get out, but if we spread out while exploring it will be difficult to get everyone to safety in time, but moving together is also really inefficient, oh, the decisions, the pressure.
Due to this constant trade-off between speed and caution, you will get into surprisingly heroic situations, like one player drawing away the horrors to give the others a chance to get out. Or have a final chase through the cave, going back for unconscious cavers, trying to carry them out before being overwhelmed by horrors. And the best thing is that these situations emerge completely organically without any outside events/forces making them happen.
The character classes are decent, you can put together interesting group combinations, there is pretty good variability in the available abilities.
For once, the completely random tile-based game mechanic works really well with the theme – caves in real life are sort of random, you could run into a dead-end anytime. You’ll end up in situations where you keep going and pushing forward, just one more tile, just one more nook, and bamm, you just dug yourself into a dead end and a horror spawns behind you and now you are screwed. You can try to hide and hope that some other caver can draw the monster away from you so you can backtrack towards the main tunnels. The tension is just tangible during these intense moments.
The design of the game is very tight, you will end up with lots of close calls and sacrifice plays, and odds are, not all of you will make out. It is just the nature of exploring caves full of horrors.
The Bad
As mentioned above, the art is not great. I understand the challenge of trying to make loads of cave tiles exciting, but still. The icons are too small and not clear enough. For example, it is difficult to tell ledges and slides apart. Horrors are represented by dull, black disks.
The game is very random. On the one hand, unexpected dangers and surprise gas explosions add to the thrill of the game, on the other hand, it is hard to plan with it. It takes out some strategy from the gameplay. You simply can’t plan with all the possibilities, it is too unpredictable, so you push ahead hoping for the best.
The Co-Op
The co-op mechanics are excellent in the game. You need to coordinate your group and play to everyone’s strengths in order for some of you to survive.
I can’t stress enough how heroic the game can be, probably the most heroic board game we have ever played. My partner in crime played with the geologist who ended up drawing away three horrors from the rest of the party, constantly hiding and trying to sneak around them. In the end, they got him and we ended up facing a big decision: leave him or try to get him out? We have found the exit tile by then but it was really far away, there was no way to make it there and back, especially through tight spaces and flooded chambers. We were playing in a crowded board game cafe with bright lights, sipping hot chocolate but that decision really weighed on us. I’m sorry geologist.
The Recommendation
Sub Terra is very similar to Pandemic, it’s a relatively simple but engaging family-style quick co-op game. Sub Terra is less strategic due to the completely random nature of the tile placement, but not having to optimize every single action you take might be an advantage in certain groups. It’s also more atmospheric and thematic, in Sub Terra, you really can just roleplay as a brave cave explorer and you probably won’t ruin the chances of winning.
The game is fun, atmospheric, exciting, maybe a bit random, but it will definitely give you an epic and heroic experience.
Info
| Release Year | 2017 |
| Genre | Strategy |
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Number of Players | 1 to 6 |
| Length | 1 hour |
Rating
| Overall | Good |
| Story | Mediocre |
| Co-Operation | Great |