Bright Light Media, the team that has successfully run kickstarters for their genre darling Mixtape Massacre and its expansions are back to change up their game. Mixtape Massacre is the kind of game that’s easy to learn and pick up and feels perfect to break out at parties. It’s an incredibly popular board game among horror folks and for good reasons: it’s made by huge genre fans who get what their games are meant to do.

Now they’re back with FLOAT: From the Deep, an aquatic horror board/card game centered around trying to survive in the ocean long enough to reach an island…and if you can sabotage your friends to keep the monstrous sea creatures away from you? Well, all the better.

FLOAT: From the Deep is described as a fast-paced tabletop game where players find themselves lost at sea, battling monsters from below while trying to outsmart and outlast their fellow survivors. I was invited to a private Q&A where creator Freddie Carlini went through the rules and showed how the game was to be played. People who follow me know I’m a board game fanatic and when Freddie was explaining the game, I kept thinking back to Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game. Like that game, in FLOAT you have to manage resources (water in this case) as well as your group of survivors while trying to clear daily status cards that can affect your survival as well as instant events (Out of the Blue cards).

Like in horror movies, not all survivors are beneficial and you’ll have the option of throwing them overboard when you find better ones. And as the rounds and days go by, your boats will be circled by monsters out of an aquatic horror film, and you’re able to sabotage the other players in order to draw the creature’s attention away from you. I can imagine particularly cutthroat players will make and break alliances on their way to survive to the mysterious island. But like Mixtape Massacre, a game of FLOAT isn’t a long, drawn-out affair, as games are meant to run around 30 minutes+, which is perfect for having some friends over and tossing back a few drinks.

While I can’t reveal some of the content coming down the line, Freddie did say that they have a lot of back story mapped out and he gave me some incredibly exciting details about what they’ve planned. And I have to say that what he showed me and told me has me very excited for FLOAT’s future. We’re talking boosters and possible expansions. We’re talking some new and exciting threats coming down the way. And something I’m not allowed to discuss that has left me positively buzzing to see where FLOAT is ultimately heading.

I own all of the Mixtape Massacre games and so I’m writing this not as someone preparing a press release but as a general fan of the company and their games. FLOAT: From the Deep is currently on Kickstarter and you can go back the game and help get the game funded as well as unlock stretch goals here.