$16.99Menace from the Deep Sanity Not Included
Three investigators chase a strange monolith across 1920s America, one card at a time.
Is Menace from the Deep worth it?
Menace from the Deep is worth it if…
- you want a deckbuilder with a real story wrapped around the card battles
- you like Lovecraft, cosmic dread and monsters with names you cannot pronounce
- you enjoy runs where the deck you use changes shape as you play it
- you want a dark, atmospheric world you can keep coming back to
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Three investigators, three ways to fight
You pick from three heroes, each with a deck and fighting style of their own. The Detective fights with classic attacks and defence, and has a pet dog who joins the fray; keep him shielded, because he does not come back. The Professor summons crows and rats to fight alongside them and leans on poison. The Cultist works with bleed and bloodlust. Every character also has a sanity meter next to their health bar, and some monsters, bosses especially, chip away at the mind instead of the body. Either hitting zero ends the run.
A grim story told in fragments
The campaign follows a clandestine occult society in 1920s America and its slow unraveling around the Heart of the Sea, a monolith that should not exist. Every member of the society hides a secret, and you piece them together by collecting memory fragments as you play. Cutscenes are fully voiced, and the story carries more weight than most deckbuilders bother with. It is a grim, tragic tale, and the ending lands differently depending on how much of the mystery you have uncovered along the way.
Cards that grow the more you use them
Most cards upgrade multiple times, and some offer a choice between two versions, so the cards you lean on become genuinely yours. Add relics that come in collectible sets (complete a set for a bonus relic), equipment, consumables, and a combo system that rewards chaining attacks or blocks in a single turn, and there is plenty to tinker with between fights.
What do you do between battles?
What do you do between battles?
More than most deckbuilders. Travel is handled through travel cards, so you choose your route event by event, visiting different locations and running into the grim happenings of the world. You gather building materials along the way and spend them on base upgrades that make later journeys easier. You can also recruit allies for battles, or summon help through magical rituals, items or cards. Expect a difficulty spike partway through the story that pushes you toward grinding those base upgrades; if you prefer a run you could theoretically win first try, that is the part to know about.
Can you play it solo?
Yes, it is a singleplayer game through and through. The story campaign, the runs, the base building and the card battles are all built around one player taking on the game's monsters and cultists.
How does it look and sound?
The art is hand-drawn in a comic book style, and it is the part of the game that gets the most praise: moody, era-appropriate and genuinely eerie, from the coastal town of Innsmouth to the things lurking beyond it. The music is spooky and fits the 1920s setting, and the voiced cutscenes sound properly acted. The whole thing leans hard into atmosphere, and it pays off.
