Deep Madness vs. Dawn of Madness
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Transcript
Some viewers may find the following video disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.
Hey everyone, welcome back to Board Games Unlocked. And today I'm going to be doing something a little different for the channel. Uh, but first and foremost, I want to say happy Halloween. I hope the month of October has been especially spooky for you. This time of year is always my favorite one because summer is dead and I'm very happy for that. And just the the amount of horror games that we get are so much fun to play, especially like video games, media. It's just just my favorite type of uh time of year. But today, I'm going to be doing a comparison video between what I believe to be some of the best horror games, you know, in our industry. And both of them are done by the same company, Dimension Games, and that is Deep Madness and Dawn of Madness. Now, based off the names, you might think that they're sequels or expansions to one another. They are uh completely different games in the sense of how they play and function and stuff like that, but because of them being by the same company, you might be wondering which one should you get if you are looking to get one. And I'm hoping to answer or uh help you out in that decision- making.
So, I've done a previous video like this before with Aon Trespass Odyssey versus Kingdom Death Monster. This format's going to be a little bit different because I'm obviously on a computer and that one was done by kind of a more in a not really debate approach, but it was me and my friend cuz he was he has everything for Kingdom Death Monster and I had everything for AM Trespass Odyssey. Here, I'm just the one who has everything for both of these. So, yeah, with uh I guess we can go ahead and get started. So, with a comparison video, I really like the idea of having five kind of talking points. And for this one, it's going to be price and content, gameplay mechanics, game flow and structure, theme and aesthetics, and then replayability and variety.
So, first, let's uh let me talk about kind of what these games are before I jump into the first topic, which is going to be price and content. So, Deep Madness is both well, both of them are survival horror games, but Deep Madness is kind of your sci-fi horror game that is set in a deep sea mining facility. They utilize a lot of kind of like Evil Within and Dead Space vibes, but if it were underwater, that's the best kind of uh, you know, feel I can give for it. I mean, now that I've played the Silent Hill 2 remake, it it gives a lot of that kind of vibe, and that is really kind of where where it sets in. It's an action horror kind of game. Dawn of Madness is obviously horror, but you are kind of put into a hellscape, which is set into your own mind. you're you take the place of a wanderer that's going to be the main focal point of the story that goes into the characters past and their experiences, their fears, their interpretations. Uh this one gives a lot more Silent Hill. Um mainly with Deep Madness, whenever I mentioned Silent Hill, I was thinking like the the tiles flip and that kind of ch it makes me think of the going into the other world.
But Dawn of Madness feels like it has a lot more Silent Hill vibes because of the fact of it's your own character's interpretation. You're reliving your past. You're you're experiencing trauma that you're just kind of having to deal with. And you know, that kind of is the experience of Dawn of Madness. So, that's really kind of the theme and setting. And I know that jumps a little bit into the very uh in the fourth category, but I kind of want to jump uh jump right into that before I start talking about everything else. Okay. Now, for the real first category, whenever we're looking at price and content, this one gets a little bit weird just because both of these games are Kickstarter and they have had multiple, you know, print runings, multiple crowdfunding sessions.
Deep Madness getting a second printing and expansion content. Dawn of Madness also getting kind of a a reprinting with expansion content. So, it it's not uh 100% clear focus. And you also aren't really able to just go out to a game store and buy them. You either will have to late pledge if they're available or get it secondhand. But it I mean I still think it's something worth worth uh bringing up. So, let's start with Dawn of Madness or Deep Madness. If you're looking at the all-in pledge, and of course, with any Kickstarter, you don't have to do the all-in if you're So, let's if you're looking at the core box, just the core box, that runs you 75 uh USD, but if you are looking at the all-in pledge, that runs you about 360 USD, but that gets you, of course, everything. that gets to the core game, the Endless Nightmares expansion, the Encountered Horrors expansion, Rise of Deaeon, the Oracles Betrayal, Spawn of the Sleeper, uh Epic Monster, Insidious Epic Monster. So, a bunch of these uh epic monsters, and then of course the the extras that don't really matter. But in terms of game content, that gives you a bunch more extra monsters and then four big box uh expansions.
So, that is where Deep Madness sits. Dawn of Madness is a little bit cheaper, surprisingly, and that is 313, even though I feel like Dawn of Madness has more work going into it, which I'll explain later, but that gets you the core box, the miniature box. Um, and then one uh one, two, three, four, five, five separate expansions. Forgotten Void of Art and Oblivion, the Nummina Abominations, Executioners Abomination, and the Depression's Distortion expansion. So, these are all uh things. So, in terms of content that you get, I think you kind of get more physical content with Deep Madness. So, if we take a look at I can close out of this picture and I'll have to zoom back in um 100%. So, if we take a look at the expansions page on Board Game Geek, um, yeah, there's the Epic Monster and then Faces of the Sphere. Then you have Penitent and Forsaken Epic Monster. And then where are they? These are all Yeah, Uncounted Horrors, Endless Nightmares, Oracles, Betrayal, and Rise of Deeon.
So, these give you new investigators, you know, uh new new enemies and more more cards and more scenarios. These kind of big box expansions. Um, so it feels like you definitely get a lot more physical stuff. You get more monsters to fight. You get more investigators to play. and you get um just more more cards and things like that. Dawn of Madness is a little bit more simplistic in and the stuff. I mean, you still have miniatures. There's still miniatures to play. There's tokens and all that, but the biggest difference between these two in terms of the content you are getting is instead of a bunch of plastic and tokens and cards and stuff, you get a lot of it in the form of a novel because Dawn of Madness at its core is a narrative driven game.
So each of these expansions gives you kind of your own wanderer book and and that is kind of where the the main source of the content is. So that's why I was saying like oh Dawn of Madness it's a little bit cheaper but I feel like they have to pour more put more work into it. That's because they have to write a whole hell of a lot more uh to make it seamless within the way the game works. But if I mean and then the core game or the the the core box is 79. So, for Dawn of Dawn of Madness. So, surprisingly, the core box is $4 more. Anyway, I know price and content might not mean a whole lot to a lot of people, but if you're kind of taking a look at both of these games and you're like, "Well, what do I get for nearly $400 or three to $400 in in games?" This is kind of what what you're getting. Okay, now let's get into the meat of what these games are. So, going into gameplay mechanics.
Um, so the way that Deep Madness is structured is you have scenarios. This is a scenario driven game and they are kind of this is going to be your more traditional dungeon crawl. You are going to be picking a scenario to play. you're going to be uh setting out. I'm trying to find like There we go. You're trying to uh meet an objective that you're given within the scenario. I mean, it's no different than a lot of other dungeon crawlers out there in in the way that it actually plays. You pick an investigator to play and uh that character is going to have their own health marker or their their own health pool, their own sanity pool, uh weapons that you're getting and then you are going through a scenario trying to complete objectives that the scenario has given to you and you have win and loss conditions for that. If you've seen it in a bunch of other kind of dungeon crawl games, it has kind of the same flow here. Now, they do things a little bit different in in the nuance of the game, but the overall experience is kind of going to be that of a traditional dungeon crawler. Dawn of Madness is a little bit um Oh, I was like, what the hell? Why are there only two pictures? Dawn of Madness is a little bit more kind of abstract, I feel. In Deep Madness, you are moving through rooms, you're diving into water, uh, take, you know, you have
an oxygen meter to manage, and you're shooting. You have line of sight rules that you're shooting enemies and and things like that. Dawn of Madness has these locations that you're going in. And the the way that a a session of Dawn of Madness is played is you pick one wanderer and that wanderer is going to be the focal point of the entire session. You have a narrative book uh that has multiple different endings, has tons of choices, has its own unique cars, its own unique monsters that are that are tied to them. And that is going to be the central uh like the the storytelling point of the overall game.
And that will also indicate what happens in each of these locations. But you do still have a board kind of that you move around, but it's really these these locations here that you're going to that are going to have their storytelling points. You're going to have checks that you're going to make. Very like Eldridge horror kind of feeling in in the terms of the checks that you make. And then based off how well you do, that's going to determine the win or loss condition. But you're making decisions throughout the entire session that's going to give you points in these in one of the four endings. And then after you finish, you know, after you determine an ending, that will take you to a finale whether you will win or lose. So they they have similar feels to them. And I mean, you have monsters in Dawn of Madness. are going to be attacking you and you can still attack them and stuff, but it doesn't it's a lot more Dawn of Madness feels a lot more kind of survival uh than than deep madness does. Even though if we're looking at these pictures, it's like, well, obviously, how is this on the side not survival? It is, but it's a lot more action-packed. I guess in terms of other media, I would I would say that Dawn of Madness feels a lot more alien and Deep Madness feels a lot more aliens, a lot more action-packed. I mean, with the line of sight and moving through corridors and having to deal with a bunch of different uh hordes of enemies
in Deep Madness, you're not really getting hordes of enemies in Dawn of Madness. It's It's more like here's a few enemies and one big abomination that you have to kill to even get to the finale. That's that's the biggest uh uh action you're getting in Dawn of Madness. Um so yeah, so that is kind of the the overall gameplay mechanics. Um, if we're going a little bit, let's go a little bit into the the characters themselves. Let me see if I can find some sweet picture that's going to determine um like that will help me showcase.
Oh, this will be Yes, this will be nice. Oh my god, people's miniatures are so good. Okay. Well, I guess I'm only going to get like kind of the one the one good picture here. Um, okay. So, here we are with Dawn of Madness. And then if we're looking at Deep Madness images, we have got tons of tons of pictures. Okay, cool. Yep, this will work. This will work. Okay. So, whenever we're looking at the investigators versus the wanderers. So, the investigators uh really kind of give you that similar vibe from what you've seen in games. Like I said, Arkham Horror and Eldritor. You have a special ability. Um starting item, their threat meter, their health meter, and their sanity.
And then a backstory. You've seen this on all the characters in tons of these games. So, your health obviously is
is how much health damage you can take. But your sanity is actually a little bit different. In games like Elder Tour, that was just another type of damage meter. You take sanity damage. If it hits that threshold, then you go insane and they're they're out of the game. Um, sanity and deep madness is used a little bit different in that it's kind of your your character's uh mental capacity of seeing the horrors within the game. So, it kind of is a threshold of how much sanity you can use to do actions, but it's not it it's more of a resource that you're allowed to use. But if you're killing monsters and you have sanity tokens on your board, they are flipped to madness. And once you have a certain number of madness, you remove those and that gives you a madness card. uh which are horrendous effects that um that are negatively impact your character. But your investigator can hold can hold a bunch of items. Those items, you know, will have a melee threshold, a to hit ratio, and that's what you need to roll to be able to successfully hit, how much damage that uh weapon does. And then weapons or uh firearms do the exact same thing in that they have line of sight and they have a to hit ratio and they have damage on how much they do. So uh let's see. Yep. Here we go.
Yeah. So how many dice you roll, what you're looking for on those dice, how much damage, all that does, and has special abilities. So it has, like I said, your traditional aspect of a dungeon crawler. And it's not just weapons. there's other armor and consumables that you can find when you're searching throughout the uh you know the scenario. So that's kind of how your investigator is in uh in Dawn of Madness. I'm going to have to zoom in because I don't have as many pictures. They have a much more involved uh mechanism here. So your character has these five attributes that you are going to be managing various in this case they have cubes uh but various different colored tokens. Now I will say the dawn of madness wanderer system I think is very very uh unique but it is not intuitive. It I've never seen anything like this but it almost feels like it's way more complex than it needed to be. D Madness kind of has a lot more streamlined approach to playing the game. But if you want something that's completely different that you has never been seen before, Dawn of Madness kind of has that in spades.
So you have a bunch of these different color tokens that are going to be in uh these circular spots. And these all correspond to a different attribute that your character will have. And whenever you're making various checks based on that attribute, you are going to have certain color tokens that you can then spend as rerolls or modifiers or automatic successes uh to aid you in completing those checks. But spending uh cubes from those uh specific windows or these uh circles also have unique abilities. So, and I mean Dawn of Madness does come with a play rate that tells you what each of these each of these attributes have that you can spend tokens from, but that is mainly the biggest uh the biggest hurdle whenever you are playing Dawn of Madness. And I mean, you get items and stuff too. There are you get special abilities as you're gaining kind of these these uh tokens. I can't remember what they're called, but they're kind of like rewards what you get for killing enemies. you could then spend them on your on on your character's unique ability cards. You don't get as many items. It's not going to feel like your character could find a weapon. I mean, one of the characters as a nurse and she can start she can get a scapel.
Uh but it's not like you're going to have a a weapon deck that you're going to be running through. Your character isn't going to be, you know, going into a location guns blazing because that's just not the type of vibe you're getting from here. you might be able to find a firearm. There is a sheriff character who uh can get a firearm, but it's not like, oh, hey, I'm this gardener and all of a sudden I know how to use a, you know, 12 gauge shotgun. That's not necessarily within what their character is. So, you do get items and those items can be used to help you kill enemies, but yeah, it's it's a far cry from what you're going to be getting in Deep Madness. All right. Um, now if we're if you're looking for my opinion between these, I mean, price and content, I I could take either one. I mean, I I have I own both, so it's not like I'm sitting here uh having to make uh, you know, this decision. But I think you get a ton of content either way, and they're pretty comparable in price. So, I'd say it's probably even if you're winning my opinion on pricing content. Gameplay mechanics.
Um, I honestly pref Oh, man, they're so hard. I do really really like these games. Um, for how for how they play. Um, I think I'm still going to lean Dawn of Madness just because it's a different it's a completely different gameplay system within that that wanderer attribute track row. Yeah, it's a little, you know, convoluted whenever you're you're learning it, but I've seen stuff from Deep Madness before. It's nothing relatively new. I really like it, but I like it in a lot of those other games. So, I'm gonna give the slight edge to Dawn of Madness in the the gameplay mechanics uh category. All right.
So, now we go into game flow and structure. So, the game flow of Deep Madness, like I've mentioned a little bit before, is that it is a scenario-based game. You are uh you are picking your investigators out of however many. Let's say you have everything. You have 40 scenario or uh investigators that you can pick from. Every character, every player at the table is picking a character uh that they that they want to play. And they even have the uh you know, a play on Isaac Clark. They have a play on Ripley from Alien. They have, I think, a play on the J uh janitor from Halflife. They have a lot of, you know, nods to inspiration of what this game uh pulled from. But you pick your investigator, you pick your scenario, and you pick your monsters if the scenario doesn't tell you what you're going to need. And there are tons of monsters to actually pick from. Some of them might be epic monsters that have only one of them, but they're a lot harder to kill. Some of them are like these husks here, uh, you know, burst out these little mind eaters, so they might have swarms of enemies. There might only be a few of them, but they're harder to kill. It's really just kind of on the randomness that you set up the game. And Deep Madness, as it mentions here, is a one to six player game. I have never played it at six, but I have played it. I think four is the max that I I brought it to. Um,
but it it definitely becomes a lot more chaotic if you have the max player count. But let's say you're playing at a conservative five or five a conservative four. Um, that is going to give you kind of a lot more player agency in, you know, dividing and conquering, uh, you know, helping out with killing enemies, uh, trying to complete mission objectives and helping you out if, if you get, uh, caught up in a snag. It just, uh, it becomes a lot more helpful to have a little bit more players, but not too much. Um, that is really the the structure of of the game and the uh what you do on your turn. You have a certain number of action points to be able to, you know, do that lets you walk, move from tile to tile. It lets you search uh looking for items. It lets you um get like I think it was called consciousness cards that allow you to kind of get a benefit from keeping your sanity level low. Uh your rolling dice to to determine if you successfully hit an enemy and then how much damage that does to remove them.
You know, your standard your typical aspect of a dungeon crawler. So that is I mean a typical session and a typical session lasts about oh I don't know maybe hour and a half two hours for deep madness because there are a ton of scenarios. I want to say the core game has six. Um, and they the scenarios are kind of linked to to one another, but uh it's very very loose. Like you're not really in deep madness to to learn the lore. You learn the the the story and what's going on in the world through kind of consciousness cards and and madness cards of what's happening. The consciousness cards are almost come along uh come across as like data logs of whenever you're playing a video game and you run up on a computer and it's like here's a bunch of stuff and it's like okay this is if I really want to read it this is giving me an insight into what the overall world is is what's impacting it and what's happening. But whenever you're picking a scenario, it kind of is just your typical scenario blurb at the top and then when you are successful, it gives you like a short finale.
So that is is kind of a typical session from deep match. I mean it says 60 to 120 minutes playing time. I yeah per session I I think that that could definitely be the case. I would say it's on the the tail end of that. I think it's a a lean's probably more two hours per session, but that could also be just based off player count. Um, but on average, I'd say you have maybe about an hour and a half, two hours uh of a session. Now, Dawn of Madness is um a little bit different. So, like I mentioned, you pick a wanderer. Let's just go with Katherine Little. You pick her to be your main wanderer. The other players are their characters. Like they're the other characters. So instead of Katherine Little, it could be Oh, well it could be it could be Charles Charlie Claude Reinhardt, but you are not touching on his story.
So, if you pick Katherine Little as your wanderer, you are going to be using her book, and that's going to give you a prologue. Then, it's going to give you a an objective and goal to progress the story. Whenever you're going to various locations, you're going to look within Katherine Little's book and dealing with everything that she has to deal with. And so the other players are kind of invested in the story of Katherine Little, but if they're playing a certain character, if they're playing Claude, they're getting nothing for him. Like your next session would have to be picking him as your main wanderer. But over the course of of the game and every single wanderer has has different play styles within their own book. Like the the priest um yeah Lionus, he actually has a completely different way that the game ends. Like I mentioned earlier, Dawn of Madness has four different um four different uh endings that you can get.
He does still have four different endings, but you have a shorter amount of time to actually get to one of them. Um, because you have about 10 rounds to get a certain number of ending points that will pinpoint you to an ending while you're also trying to kill the abomination. So, your game play will, like I said, focus on a wanderer uh whatever theirs is going to be uh uh having you do and then you have a singular abomination that you have to kill. So, you kill the like even if you get the correct amount of points that you need within 10 rounds to get to an ending, if you don't kill the abomination, you have failed. So, you have to kill the abomination and then get enough uh points and then go to the finale.
for one of those four endings. Um, and that is a typical session for Dawn of Madness. Now, how long does that take? Dawn of Madness is a very, very long game. Now, in their most recent update, they have provided a they they have provided kind of like a pseudo save system um that you can do right now, but in their next batch of content, they're providing an actual physical save system. So currently you have to kind of do one yourself, but in the future there will be a save system just because I mean in the last game of Dawn of Madness that I played, it takes about six hours, maybe four to six hours for a session of Dawn of Madness. So, in the amount of time you could do three scenarios in Deep Madness, you're doing one scenario or one session of Dawn of Madness.
So, it can be a lot more involved and a lot more of a time commitment um to play through Dawn of Madness as it currently sits. Currently, there is not really a good save system. Uh but so that is something to definitely take into consideration. Now, Dawn of Madness only plays up plays one to four. Uh I would agree with the community here. I would say at most you're playing at a two. It says best at one and that makes sense just because you're gonna you're only following one wanderer story. So I mean only seven people. So, because the game I mean I should have mentioned Don Deep Madness came out in 2018. Dawn of Madness came out in 2024.
So, Dawn of Madness is the significantly newer game. But yeah, I can see why people are saying it's best at one just because like I said, you're picking a wanderer following that person's story and but I I mean I always like narrative driven games with with another person to share in the experience. Um so yeah it is definitely a more committed uh session. So between the two which one do I prefer? Um, I mean, I still think I'm going to lean Dawn of Madness just because I am such a huge narrative driven campaign game boy that I just really like I I really like the narrative investment for the characters. And while the the game play and and everything of Deep Madness is I would say Deep Madness is a lot more of a fun experience in that it's a lot more action-packed and and you can kind of funny enough you can get a little bit more into the headsp space of your characters if you're going for that type of vibe of run into a room guns blazing. This gives you your your feeling of uh yes of this of being surrounded by a bunch of monsters. Your dead space feeling of you having just a rail gun
and you're just firing through a room and killing a bunch of of these horrific monsters and stomping them while you're trying to swim through this underwater facility that would just give me a panic attack. And the monsters are swimming after you. you can get way more into the action because you can physically see it all. Uh, and that could be a lot of fun. I mean, just a a small example of if you lock a room and you put like a door down and a monster is trying to get through you if you're on the direct other side, you can actually make checks to try and keep the door shut and prevent them from getting in. You can have some really cool uh, you know, heroic moments with that. Dawn of Madness has none of that. It has a lot more of in your head of of reading a horror book and getting into the overall atmosphere of what the game is giving to you of the pictures that it's showing you, the descriptions of what your wanderer is going through or what the wanderer, not your wanderer. If you're playing solo, it's your wanderer, but of what your character is is getting into. And because they're going for a lot more of a narrative aspect with Dawn of Madness, they could be a lot more descriptive.
So, it kind of is deterministic based on how you absorb media. If do you need to physically see it to be able to get into the atmosphere and the theme, then Deep Madness is definitely going to give that to you. If you're more of a internal person, then Dawn of Madness is going to help out a lot because they have way more uh descriptions and and you know scenes that are being read to you. But if you're also playing with another person, that other person is going to be reading all that aloud to you. Um but at the same time, they are also working on audio narration for Dawn of Madness. So, that would help significantly. Uh, so you don't have to listen to someone read to you for 5 hours.
I'm still, man, I almost talked myself into Deep Madness a little bit. And like I said, I love both of these games. There's a reason why I'm doing this video, but I think because I love narrative driven games so much and I love the fact that well, I'll talk about a little bit later, but I I'mma lean into uh Dawn of Madness just a little bit from personal taste and yeah. Okay, so now we are going into theme and aesthetics and this kind of tied into the game flow and structure a little bit. So, um let's see. How do I want to um the theme of both of them, like I talked about a little bit earlier, is they're both kind of sci-fi horror. Um, Deep Madness a little bit more sci-fi than Dawn of Madness. But from my understanding with Dawn of Madness, the reason why you're in the scenario that you are is through a device that they are putting these people in to dive into their into their psyche.
And Deep Madness, I feel, is like an actual physical location that happens to have supernatural elements happening in this facility. again, very similar to Dead Dead Space. Um, so those are kind of what you what you're going for with either one. With the immersiveness of the game, it kind of goes into how invested can you be whenever you're playing the game. Dawn of Madness is going to be immersive almost immediately. If one, if you're playing it by yourself, then you're just reading it to yourself. But if you're playing with other people, it's going to be only as immersive as your strongest reader. Now, with the audio narration, if that comes out, I can't remember if that's being done by Foreller or inhouse. Either way, if it's done very very well, then that's going to make it a lot more immersive. Just uh but that's still depending on whether or not you like that type of gaming. If you love sitting around a table and having audio narration read to you and that's how you can feel immersed whether they put in ambiance or sound, you know, soundtracks or different voice actors or a really strong single uh narrator.
That's going to help or hurt. If it's a very bad audio narration or you have a bad reader who just reads it very blah, then you're not really going to get a whole lot of immersion out of Dawn of Madness. But so it's very hot or cold. It could be hit or miss with with Dawn of Madness. Um, hell, I am probably one of the strongest readers that I know in my game group. And I do my very very best to try and emphasize emotion or different characters. I try to do my voices uh to make it entertaining, especially if I'm doing it for the channel, but um to make it entertaining for the people I'm playing with, but because I'm focused on all of that, I'm not really retaining anything that I'm reading. Um but I'm also not the biggest person who likes to be read aloud to some uh you know, have other people read aloud to me. I kind of zone out. So, I much prefer having audio narration.
And even then, I still have to do it for like five hours with Dawn of Madness. So, it could be it could be very taxing. Deep Madness, if you're looking for story, you're not getting much. Don't get me wrong, it still has atmosphere. It still has theme, but like I said, a lot of your story is going to be coming from the opening blurb and the scenario and then through some of the cards, which I'm God, there's so many painted minis. Those are amazing. Um, but you're to to know what's really going on, you're going to have to kind of piece meal a bunch of different uh cards and and stuff together that you have. And the and the unfortunate thing is the scenarios aren't card specific or the cards aren't scenario specific. So it's not like it's like, oh, you're doing scenario three, take the scenario three cards so you can kind of work out what's going on. It's just a deck of cards for the consciousness cards. I'm really trying to see if they have a picture of them, but I imagine it's just going to be a bunch of different Is this one? Um, yeah. Yeah, kind of. I mean, not really.
Uh the I mean, there's some cards, but uh each card does have flavor text on them, but it's like I said, it's like a data log. It's a a journal that you come across, and you're not really playing Deep Madness, I think, for the the narrative element. So, there's a lot more gameplay uh features to Deep Madness, and that where that's probably where the most of the immersion is going to be is going to be coming from. And don't get me wrong, Deep Madness does have lore. It does have story, but it's more of like the handwaving uh effects of of an action movie. like, yeah, there's a plot here. Something's going on, but you're that you're not really going to get a whole lot of in-depth nature from Deep Madness.
And so that that's but your immersion is going to come from these types of scenarios that I mentioned earlier of, you know, running around, swimming through water, finding a a a blowtorrch or a flamethrower that lets you completely melt every enemy in here, or running in and beating one of these tentacle monstrosities to death with a bat. uh having tons of monsters spawn up around you as you're running to a tram at the end after having turned on all the power switches dividing and conquering uh while trying to you know you take you get cut off from a from a blinder that blinds you and so you can't do anything on your turn. You have to have someone come and get you. That's where the immersion is going to be coming from in the the actual physical pieces of Deep Madness and Dawn of Madness. the emergence is going to be coming from the book, from the narrative. Um, so this again, I'd probably call it a draw with with the two. I mean, again, my much preferred preference, I really like narrative driven games. However, until that audio narration comes out, Dawn of Madness is very taxing to read because I'm the one reading it. Now, if I'm playing solo, it's not that big of a deal. I just read it to myself and it could be great. Um, so it's, yeah, it it's definitely going to be group dependent. And I feel like Dawn of Madness can have more negatives
with with a group. If you're if you're want to play like a four-player game, let's say you're trying to play a four-player game of both of these, you're going to have a higher chance of Dawn of Madness flopping than succeeding with a fourplayer group than I think Deep Madness uh, would provide because everyone gets to be involved in the action. if Dawn of Madness had a little bit more if it was everyone's story being being merged together and everyone got to be involved into what their their wanderer was doing. That might be something different, but that's not the case. So, in Deep Madness, everyone gets to be involved. All of these five characters get to be do, you know, get to be doing something and get to, you know, have really cool badass moments. And you don't really get that with Dawn of Madness. So, I'm actually going to lean a little bit. I think it's for my personal preference, it's kind of even, but I'm I think I'm I might actually lean Deep Madness in ter terms of like the the overall aesthetics and how players are getting involved within the game um and how immersive it can be.
Even though, like I said, Dawn of Madness is very immersive just because of the sheer nature of its narrative. But I think I'm trying to think of generally deep madness can be a lot more fun because it it still does have story and the the flavor text you do come across quite often can still be exciting and relevant to the the overall structure of what D Madness is trying to tell. All right, so the last category is replayability and variety. And this kind of ties into the content aspect. I think both of these games have tons of replayability. Um, the number of scenarios and missions and monster types. I mean, I've been like cycling through these pictures and there are tons of monsters.
Especially, let's just again say you have the all-in for it. You're gonna have tons of epic monsters, tons of mobs and swarms and singular enemies. Oh god, I would imagine being this guy. And the the sheer amount of scenarios you get with all of the expansions um does give you tons of ways to play. The amount of investigators you get. Oh, there's 828 images. All right, let's look through them all. Um, yeah, like there's tons of investigators, a stack of investigators, stacks of items and consciousness cards and madness cards. You could play the same scenario over and over with a bunch of different investigators and and scenarios and monsters being thrown in and that's going to give you a different experience. So, yeah, I mean, the scenarios are limited. There is a finite amount of them, but you have a bunch.
And even if you you would just it's kind of like replaying a video game again. You're like, I'm going to do a different build. You can get completely different items that will will a you know, help or hurt you as you're trying to complete a scenario. If I'm not mistaken, I believe there's also a difficulty meter in Deep Madness, uh, that if you find this the game to be, you know, easy, they are winning all the time, you can adjust the difficulty to make it harder on yourself. So, oh yeah, this is a good picture. So, yeah, these all of these boxes provide you with more scenarios, more monsters, more investigators, more cards, and more stuff. So yes, there is quite a bit of replayability and variety with Deep Madness.
Dawn of Madness also has a ton of replayability, mainly because of the way that the game the game's flow is formatted. So, in the core game, you have four uh you have four wanderers. You have Claude Reinhardt, you have uh Katherine Little, you have L Oh, these are videos. I'm like, what the hell? You have Oh, what's a stupid name? Lionus Gershwin. And then you have Oh, it's not Katherine Little. Oh, these are two same pictures. You have a fourth one and she's the she's the nurse.
I'm trying to see if I can find find a picture. But so you have four wanderers, and each of these wanderers have a massive book uh that that you read through. And each of those has four different endings. And the path you take to get to those endings are completely different. So you have a bunch of different um ways you could play the exact same wanderer. You have a bunch of different enemies uh that can be thrown in. I mean your wanderer has specific monsters that they can that could that can be brought in but there are basically kind of these um families almost uh like if we're taking a look at yeah symptoms patient I can't remember I can't read what that is but they have kind of subcategories that are going to bring in different monsters.
So, you do have you have not as many monsters, but you have still quite a few quite a good selection of monsters that could be thrown in. You have different families of abominations now. Well, right now there's uh only two uh different families uh within, but there's more abominations within those families, but those can be thrown in. So, you have quite uh a good selection of of your of your monsters, but you don't have quite as good of a selection of of investigators. I mean, you have four wanderers, like I said, so your variety is not as good. I mean, if we're taking a look at like the Is there like an overall picture of the content for Deep Madness or for Dawn of Madness? No, not really. Um, but actually I know where I can or I can go to show a picture. Dawn of Madness, the complete collection. There you go.
So, this is Deep Madness. And then you have Dawn of N. Go back. That's a better picture. Now, this is where the replayability comes from. So, each of these are going to be coming. I mean, this is the core box with four wanderers. Each of these are coming with another wanderer and another book. And so, each wanderer has four different endings. And like I mentioned, each session is five to six hours. Four to six hours if you can if you really can hurry it up. So, while you have a ton of physical content with Deep Madness that gives you a bunch of replayability and variety, you have that you can play two or three sessions at once or you can play the same session, you know, three times and have, you know, with different investigators, different weapons, different monsters. You you're only playing one session of Dawn of Madness.
So, you're getting within one wanderer 20 hours of gameplay. Let's just split the diff and say a session is five hours. That takes you to one ending out of four for one wanderer. So, you have tons of replayability. I think you honestly have I think you have more replayability with Dawn of Madness than you are with Deep Madness, but you have more variety with Deep Madness than you do Dawn of Madness. Um, so it's just it's it's so difficult to choose because I know a lot of people just kind of like because whenever you're set into a rhythm um of being able to play like Deep Madness, like for example, then it's just going to be like it's going to be very quick. You're going to be able to get into a game, play it, and have an awesome experience.
But then Dawn of Madness, you got to sit down and plan for a day's gaming session and be engrossed that entire time. And when you're done, you put the book away. And then you're like, "All right, that was an experience." And then you you bring it out again. You're like, "Okay, we got we got ending A. Now, let's try and go for ending B." And then I mean once you're done with a a complete wanderer then you're like I I potentially have learned everything about this one wanderer and when you get everything for it that's that's honestly one out of four from from the core box and then all of these well actually I think these are the miniatures but all of the other boxes have a wanderer tied to them. And then they're also including the seven deadly sins as well that just add more uh monsters and they are going to come with more monsters, more items, more locations, more abominations. So there is a lot more uh variety in terms of that stuff coming with Dawn of Madness. But right now you have tons more with Deep Madness.
So yeah, so the question is does the does it stay fresh over multiple plays? I think both of them do. Both of them are extremely strong in replayability and variety. That it honestly does kind of I mean you have more replay-ability with Dawn of Madness. Just the sheer length of a session is going to mean that you're going to get more miles out of it. But the amount of content you currently have with Deep Madness, I think makes it also have legs that it kind of comes down to a wash. like they're both they're both equal in replayability and variety in my mind. So, I mean, again, it's no surprise that my preferred preference is is Dawn of Madness. If you're asking my opinion, then take no, you know, look no further than where I have them ranked. I have Dawn of Madness at a nine and deep madness at an eight. Like it's really I mean if you care about rankings at all this is honestly still my current sitting. Like it's not like I put Deep Madness at an eight in 2018. I've replayed Deep Madness very recently around the same time I did Dawn of Madness actually just to kind of have a a stronger comparison between the two.
And yes, I think each of these has pros and cons uh to them, but I think I really like Don Madness just a point more. And that's it. That is my comparison video for Halloween between both Deep Madness and Dawn of Madness. We'll see how these games shape up over time, but in like I said at the very beginning, these are probably some of the some of the best horror games that we have in the on the market. And and yeah, and I hope you enjoyed this comparison video. Um, if you if you did like it, let me know in the comments below. Let me know which one of these uh that you prefer in the comments. I would love to know everyone's thoughts on each of these categories. Um, I know the categories kind of blended a little bit.
I kind of I kind of hop back and forth. I wasn't as uh, you know, I the the categories weren't as separate as I would have liked them to be. So, if you can think of better categories for future versus videos, then uh, I'd be more than happy to know about them. And also, if you have any other versus videos that you'd like me to do, then let me know that as well. But I think that's it everyone. I hope you enjoyed. Like, comment, share, and subscribe. And have a wonderful whatever time of day it is for you.