2024 brought us a wealth of great games to play, but none better than Leviathan Wilds. It won our annual award for Game of the Year, and was an amazing offering from first-time publisher Moon Crab Games.

If you haven’t played this gem of a cooperative game, you should, it’s great. But what’s more exciting is that the this year brought us the first expansion for Leviathan Wilds, called Deepvale. Is this a worthy addition to the game? Let’s find out.

Gameplay Overview:

For those who are new, I’ll point you to our original review of the base game here to get the full ins and outs. But the basics are that you and your fellow players are climbers who have to move around a leviathan to shatter crystals that are making it crazy and sending it on a rampage.

The Deepvale expansion comes with 7 new leviathans to tackle, one new climber, and one new class. Moon Crab Games also sent us the upgrade kit and deluxe components to fix up our core set. The upgrade kit comes with a revised rulebook and a handful of errata’d cards. The deluxe components replace your punchboard tokens with acrylic ones, gives you a dual-layered turn board, and fancier dice.

New Leviathans to tack on, with unique properties!

Game Experience with the Expansion:

So let’s talk about Deepvale before getting into the other bits. Deepvale is going to slide in seamlessly with your core game. It doesn’t introduce anything super complex or change up the gameplay all that much. But what it does do is provide more content for those of you who have played this game a lot.

The harvester has a d6 that will count up to unleash its special power.

The new climber, Edge, is pretty great. He has the ability to activate his focus token a lot more. This is helpful in games to boost many of your actions. And the new Harvester class focuses on increasing your harvest die (d6), and once it gets to 6, you can activate to get either a super-strong strike or a large movement.

The 7 new leviathans all have decent complexity (ranging from 2–4 stars), and offer new mechanics during the game. For example, the first new leviathan, the Keeper, needs to be cleansed of crystals like usual, but also requires you to retrieve a special key. You actually start at the top of the map, and have to work your way down to get the key, then drop it off at an exit back at the top of the map. Or there is the Ravager, who has a priority token that focuses all his wrath on one unlucky climber. Overall, the new leviathans are great additions to the game and should offer a decent challenge to players.

The upgrade pack includes some nice quality of life upgrades, like the dual layered track.

Moving on to the deluxe pack, this includes some nice upgraded bits for your game. Whether this one is worth it to you or not really comes down to personal preference. I enjoy blinging out my games, so I was happy to replace the cardboard tokens with acrylic and get a dual-layered threat board. If you don’t care about that, or fancier dice and a metal coin, you could probably skip this pack and play with the components you have.

Finally, there is the upgrade pack. This gives you a much better rulebook, replaces some incorrect cards, and has a replacement wooden gambler token. This one only costs $5, so it’s worth getting to have the most updated cards and an improved rulebook.

Final Thoughts:

For fans of Leviathan Wilds, Deepvale is an easy addition. The new leviathans are all fun to play, and while I wish there were more classes and climbers, what they did include are great. The upgrade pack is also worth getting (especially if you are buying both of those at the same time). For only $5, it’s a nice quality-of-life improvement. As far as the deluxe components, I like them, but if you don’t think the extra bling is worth $24, I could understand that. All in all, though, this is a nice add-on for Leviathan Wilds and worth getting. Plus, all the content fits nicely in the base game box!

BuyHits:
• New additions integrate nicely with the base game
• A new climber and class!
• Everything fits in the core box
• Improved rulebook!

Misses:
• Only 1 new class and climber