Pandemic: Contagion and Pandemic: The Cure Reviews

Today, dear readers, you are in for a treat! Not one, but TWO reviews for the price of one! (Still free.) I'm going to take a look at two new games in the "Pandemic-verse," - Pandemic: Contagion and Pandemic: The Cure.

Pandemic has a special place in my gamer heart. It is the first modern board game I played (I had already tried Carcassonne and Catan at this point) that really captured my imagination and made me think, "Wow - we can do this with a board game?? What else is out there??"

Pandemic is the game that is responsible for me doing new things with old friends, meeting great new friends, having an owned games list over 200 (and a previously owned game list approaching 1000), and for writing these silly game reviews.

When I heard on the Dice Tower that a Pandemic dice game was in the works, I was definitely interested. I obviously love Pandemic, but I also really enjoy cooperative games and dice games in general. I was also excited when I heard about Pandemic: Contagion - the idea of playing as diseases sounded neat, and I wanted to see what Z-Man would do with that concept.

The first thing I should mention about Pandemic: Contagion is that it is a stand-alone competitive game. It has Pandemic branding, but aesthetics is pretty much where the similarities end. In fact, Contagion is not designed by Pandemic's designer, Matt Leacock. Contagion was designed by Carey Grayson.

As I mentioned, in Pandemic: Contagion, players are diseases, trying to infect and kill off as much of humanity as possible. Countries are represented by cards, which players will be placing their cubes onto - each cube represents that disease infecting 1,000,000 of that location's population.

On a turn, a player will have two actions available. Players can draw cards (Incubate), infect a location card, or mutate their disease. Cards are the currency of the game, and come in 6 suits - one matching each continent in the game. In order to infect a new city, a player must discard two cards matching the color of the city, but to spread an infection where a player already has her disease present only costs 1 matching card.


Mutating your disease means discarding cards in order to move up on 1 of 3 tracks. The first two tracks dictate how many cards a player draws and how many cubes she places each time she takes an Incubate or Infect action, respectively. The last track, the Resistance track, symbolizes how resistant a player's disease is to the effects of humanity's medical and epidemiology communities. Each round, a new event card will be revealed. If the effect is negative, being higher up on the resistance track means a disease will be less affected by the event.

Players will score points by having the most or second most disease cubes in a city when the total number of disease cubes meets or exceeds the total population of the city.

Play continues in this way until either the event deck runs out or when there are only two city cards left. All remaining cities are scored and the player with the most points wins!

Pandemic: Contagion is not a bad game. It is also, unfortunately, not a good game. I really like when games have upgrade tracks that each player can move up to individualize how they will play the game. I was hoping that this is where the interesting decisions in Contagion would be. Unfortunately, Pandemic: Contagion does not have anything interesting here. Not much changes from game to game, and although I haven't played the game over 10 times, I would feel pretty confident in saying players should always upgrade their Incubation ability, then their Infection rate, and then their Resistance level, if they feel like it. In all of the games of this I've played, the first few rounds consisted of everyone taking the same exact turn - Incubation action then grade Incubation track.

The game starts to get interesting once a few players decide to stop upgrading and get infecting the board. But even then, the game doesn't have much to offer. There are some interesting decisions to make when infecting, since the player who places the cube that triggers a scoring gets a one-time special action, but that's about it. Even the once a round global events deck is rather boring.

Pandemic: Contagion is a very simple card game with a neat theme. It is inoffensive enough, but I found myself bored while playing it. I can't recommend it. 5.5/10.

Jim would like to thank Z-Man Games for providing him a review copy of Pandemic: Contagion.

Pandemic: The Cure has a lot more in common with its big sister than Contagion. The Cure is cooperative, and it was also designed by Matt Leacock, the designer or the original Pandemic. In Pandemic: The Cure, players are a team of specialists, working together to cure 4 diseases ravaging humanity worldwide, before either the number of outbreaks or the number of infected become overwhelming.

The world map is represented by 6 tiles, arranged in a circle. Each tiles has a continent on it and is assigned a number from 1-6. Players can move their pawns to adjacent tiles by using a boat die result, or to any tile by using an airplane result.

Much like the original, players will all win if they can cure all 4 diseases. In The Cure, they do this by collecting samples of the disease, and finding a cure by rolling the samples and getting a result of at least a 13 or higher. 

Disease cubes in The Cure are actually 6 sided dice. At the end of each player's turn, a number of cubes are drawn from a bag and rolled. These disease cubes are placed onto the continent tile that has the number matching each cube's die result. Any cross symbols are moved to the CDC tile as resources the players can use whenever they wish.

On a player's turn, she will roll all of her available dice. Any Biohazard results must be kept and will advance the Infection Rate. The player can take actions according to her die results, or she may reroll her dice. In fact, she may continue rerolling as long as she has not used all of her available dice.

Aside from the Biohazard symbol, the player dice also have the basic actions of Fly (move anywhere), Sail (move to an adjacent location), Treat (take a disease cube from your location and place it into the Treatment Center), and Collect Sample (take a disease cube from the Treatment Center and put it onto your role card, with the Collect Sample die on top).

Each player's dice will also have special symbols on them, depending on their role. Some roles are better at moving, some are better at treating and curing, while others have special faces that are unique to their role.

At the end of any turn which a player has enough samples, they can attempt to find a cure for a disease. To do this, they roll all the disease cubes they have collected, and if the result is a 13 or higher, a cure for that disease has been found! If players find a cure for all four diseases, they win! If either the Infection Rate or the Outbreaks markers reach the end of their tracks, or if there are no disease cubes left in the bag and more need to be drawn, the game ends and the players all lose.

I think the biggest gripe I have with Pandemic: The Cure is that depending on how the dice get rolled, the players could either have a cakewalk or have their butts handed to them. This is not too much of a con, since this was also true for the original Pandemic - I've certainly experienced both the "cakewalk" and "butt-handed-to-me" varieties of that game as well. 

One of my favorite parts of this game is (unsurprisingly) the dice. First, the disease dice are not simple D6 dice with a cross on one side. They are weighted very differently - the red dice, for instance, do not have 2, 3, or 5 sides. This means that certain diseases will mostly affect certain continents, which makes outbreaks more common. Another thing I like about the disease dice is that because they all have a cross side, each time a player draws disease dice from the bag, there's always hope that at least a couple of them will come up as crosses, which can be spent by the players during the game to pay for communal event cards (which all have positive effects).

Thirdly, I really like the player dice. It is really neat that the dice for each role have custom sides, but I also really like the press your luck mechanism of players being able to roll as much as they wish, but all bad results must be kept. It really adds a lot of excitement to each turn and to each roll.

While Pandemic: The Cure is a bit shorter than the original, I would say that it retains much of the feel of the "full game." The Cure even simulates the collection of cards in Pandemic by forcing players to temporarily give up dice while they are looking for a cure. 

I really like Pandemic: The Cure, and would be hard pressed if asked which game I would rather keep, original Pandemic or The Cure. Fortunately, I don't have to make such a ridiculous decision. =) I'd rate Pandemic: The Cure 8.5/10.

Dead of Winter Review

Dead of Winter is the latest game from Plaid Hat Games. Despite not being a huge fan of any of Plaid Hat's games (except for Summoner Wars, which I love), I always get very excited about each of their releases. They always have really interesting themes mixed with neat twists on game mechanisms. Does Dead of Winter buck the trend of disappointment? Would I even ask such an obvious rhetorical question is the answer was "no?" Read on to find out!

Dead of Winter is a semi-cooperative game that takes place after a zombie apocalypse has ravaged the world. Players take control of survivors in this world, struggling to live in this new world. The survivors need keep the hordes at bay and make sure the colony is safe and fed.

In a round, players will roll their action dice. On their turn, players will spend their dice in order to take actions with their survivors. These actions are things like searching locations in order to gain resources or items, fighting zombies, or building barricades. The zombies will keep coming and bad things will keep happening to the colony, until either the survivors complete their shared objective, or the colony's morale falls to 0. 

Sounds simple enough, except that Plaid Hat and Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Vega have added quite a few interesting little twists and turns to make Dead of Winter quite a unique experience. First is the fact that although the group as a whole has a common objective, each player has a personal objective. Each player's personal objective states what the player needs to accomplish in order to win. These objectives most often have a bulleted list that includes the group completing the common main objective, but also some other conditions that must be met that will likely make the group's completion of the main objective more difficult. Even if the main objective is competed, players can only win if they also completed their individual objectives as well. 

The great thing about this system is that there are also betrayer objectives. These objectives require that the game end not because the main objective has been completed, but because the colony's morale has fallen to 0. The game also includes the option to exile players from the game if they are suspected of being a betrayer. This adds a lot of tension to the game, and keeps the players from devolving the game into a mess of "well Idecide on a 'm not going to win, so no one is going to win," which, in my opinion, has been the biggest issue with semi-cooperative games in the past.

A huge source of tension in the game is the exposure die. It must be rolled every time a survivor either moves around town or fights a zombie. On about half of the sides is nothing - which is what you'll be hoping to see each time you roll that accursed die. On the other half are bad things, which cause either normal wounds, frostbite wounds, or even instant death. The fact that players can lose a survivor with a single roll of the die is a lot of fun. 

The last twist in the game is the deck of Crossroads cards. At the start of each player's turn, the player to the right of her draws a Crossroads card, and reads the it. Each Crossroads card has a condition on it, which the reader of the card does not reveal to the current player, unless the player fulfills it. These cards contain conditions like, "If the current player controls a survivor at the Police Station, read the following:" and the rest of the card has a bit of story, and then a decision. The player (and sometimes all the players) then need to decide on their course of action concerning the story, and deal with any consequences that decision presents.

Not a super exciting photo, but I didn't want to spoil anything about these awesome cards!!

This mechanism is brilliant. I know reviews can rely on hyperbole a little too often, but really the Crossroads cards are my favorite part of this game. It creates a weight to each player's turn, since she has to go about the things she wants to do, knowing that she might be interrupted at any moment by the player holding the Crossroads card. Not only that, but the Crossroads cards have really interesting story beats that can create some extraordinary moments for the players. I wish I could say more about how much fun we had with these cards, but I really don't want to give anything away.

In fact, one of the things I don't like about the game is that the Crossroads deck is limited. Don't get me wrong, Plaid Hat have provided 80 Crossroads cards, which is a lot - and a Crossroads card won't even be triggered each turn. And I'm usually the first to call out people who complain about this sort of stuff - how many times are you really going to play this game, no matter how good it is? Despite all that, (and perhaps because the cards are just so friggin' awesome) just the fact that the deck is limited (whether or not said limit will ever be reached by me) makes me want more cards.

I also mentioned how much fun that exposure die is. Well, it can also be painful (which is part of why I love it). Rolling a Bite (meaning instant death) on your first turn can really knock the wind out of you and the group - but having to deal with the consequences of that so early can definitely make things interesting for the right players.

Dead of Winter is a great game. There is a lot going on in the game, but not so much to make the game a slog. As the players internalize the rules, the narrative of the story really starts to shine through. The tensions of the individual objectives, the Crossroads cards, the exposure die, and the fact that its a pretty tough cooperative game to begin with all make for a seriously engaging experience.

The first time I played Dead of Winter was with my lovely wife, who is a seasoned gamer, and my dad, cousin, and sister - all three of whom have played some of "my games" in the past but need some encouragement to sit down with one that isn't Wits and Wagers or Telestrations. Right after we lost the first game, we started talking about the stories of our survivors, and what we would do differently when we played again. We didn't have to wait long to find out, because we played again the very next day. And after losing a second time, we set it up to play again...twice. We were up playing Dead of Winter well past 2 AM, laughing and dying horrible deaths.

Dead of Winter is the very definition of an immersive experience. My cousin, usually a "too cool for school" type, started reading the Crossroads cards in character, and was pushing all of us to do the same. We all started making up stories for our survivors about their motivations and why they always seemed to fail so miserably. Based on those memorable experiences alone, I can't recommend this game highly enough. 8.5/10.

Dead Panic Review

Dead Panic is the latest release from Justin De Witt and Fireside Games, who are both probably best known for their 2009 release, Castle Panic.

Dead Panic is a cooperative game in which players take on the roles of survivors fighting to escape a zombie onslaught. The players do this by moving around the board, and using whatever weapons they can find to kill zombies and stay alive. 

The survivors are still alive in the cabin...but the zombies have take out a wall!

Dead Panic bears some cosmetic and a few gameplay similarities with Castle Panic, but for the most part, the games are pretty different.

One of the most interesting aspects of this game is that while the game starts off cooperatively with all players on the side same, if a player character dies, she turns into a zombie - essentially switching sides - and now has the goal of killing the other players. Players win the game if they are able to survive long enough to find the pieces of the broken radio, collect them all, assemble them, call the van, and get into the van. Anyone who makes it into the van and escapes wins, and any zombie players lose.

Each player will choose a character to play. Each character has special abilities that will need to be utilized in order to make sure the group survives until help can arrive. On a turn, a player will have 2 actions. Possible actions include basic things like drawing a card (when still inside the cabin), using a card, moving, and other special things like repairing, trading, or assembling.

After taking actions (and hopefully killing some zombies), the player has to draw an event card. This card will usually indicate how many zombie tokens need to be drawn and added to the board, as well as which zombies move. After this, all players have to fight any zombies she shares a space with, by using either any weapons she might be (hopefully) carrying or her bare hands. 

Dead Panic is a game that I had high hopes for. I had really wanted to like another game from Fireside Games - Castle Panic - which is distantly related to Dead Panic, but found it overly simple with not very many decisions to be made. While that game was a good choice for family play with younger children, I was hoping that Dead Panic would add more options, and more decisions to a base system that I thought had some interesting potential. And although Dead Panic does add more to the system, I would not say it is a vast improvement over Castle Panic. 

I do really like the aspect of players turning into zombies and then working against the rest of the players. That adds a neat dynamic especially towards the end of the game - when it becomes pretty clear that at least some of the players are going to win, do those in stronger positions take the risks necessary to make sure everyone survives, or does it devolve into "every man for himself" at some point? That piece of the game is a lot of fun. And of course rolling dice for combat adds an exciting "Ameritrash" level of excitement to the game. Overall, though, I was disappointed with Dead Panic.

First, the rulebook is formatted awkwardly. It is easy enough to read through to learn the game, but there are so many tiny rules and rule exceptions that finding that clarification during the game can be very frustrating. The publisher has released a FAQ that address some rules confusions, which is great of them, but might not be found by some players.

Look at all of those! Are you kidding?

I mentioned the rules exceptions above. In many games, and most cooperative games, there are upkeep steps that are required to keep the game moving. These steps are usually outside of the realm of any single player's turn, and (ideally) need to be memorized in order to keep the game moving smoothly. In Dead Panic, at least one of the players needs to know how the zombies move each turn. The table above shows all of the special rules for zombie movement. Does that look like fun to you? For our games I would have kept the rulebook open to this page, but we kept having so many other rules questions that I had to keep flipping back to it. This may seem like a minor quibble, and maybe it would be for some players, but for me, having to look up and confirm rules questions after a fourth and fifth game in the rulebook and the FAQ is rare, and a deal breaker.

I think I would have to give Dead Panic a 5.5/10. There is a game here, but I don't find it especially enjoyable. I do think it is worth reiterating that I did have high expectations for Dead Panic, and these were not compatible with what Fireside Games intended with this release. Dead Panic is absolutely one of those games that I could see other people enjoying, that I just don't "get."

Jim would like to thank Fireside Games for providing him with a review copy of Dead Panic.

Assault on Doomrock Preview

[This post is a preview for a game currently seeking funding on IndieGoGo.]

Assault on Doomrock, designed by Tom Stasiak, is a game currently seeking funding on IndieGoGo. It is a fantasy themed cooperative game that combines a ton of great features and mechanisms. It has players assuming the roles of heroes (that have some rather interesting and comedic traits) who are traveling to the titular Doomrock to fight and defeat the big bad. It does a lot of neat things and really aggressively trims the "fat" from what has become the prevailing model for these types of "dungeon crawl-y" games.

Ready for adventure! Initial set-up for the myriad decks of cards.

Gameplay in Assault on Doomrock is split up into two distinct parts. First, heroes will have to make choices about how best to spend their time exploring and encountering the randomly generated locations of adventure mode in order to visit shops, gather gear, and level up. There will always be three areas available for the players to travel to.



Each area card will have several locations the players can encounter for a variety of effects, some positive and some negative. Most actions players take during this phase of the game will cost a certain number of time units, which the players need to spend wisely - because once these are depleted, the heroes will have to enter combat with enemies.

Combat in Doomrock is done with dice, but not in the traditional way. Each hero will have ability cards which can be activated with specific dice. Before each combat round begins, each player will roll their dice and assign them to corresponding ability cards. Once combat proper begins, each hero will be able to activate each ability once for every die she had previously placed on her hero's ability cards.

If the Rogue had two 6's on her Poisonous Stab ability card, she would be able to activate that ability twice this combat round.

Combat in Doomrock is different from what one might expect from a fantasy game in another way - tactical positioning and movement is very abstracted. Heroes and monsters are represented on the field of battle by cardboard discs. These discs are either adjacent to each other or they aren't (distant). Heroes and monsters can use melee attacks on enemies adjacent to them, and ranged attacks on enemies who are distant from them. 

I had a lot of fun playing Assault on Doomrock. The art is fantastic and beautiful, and I really like how it is set in a fantasy world with the familiar structure that provides, but Tom has put a very funny twist on everything in his take on traditional fantasy that I find delightful.

I also really like how Tom has separated the two parts of the game, the adventure phase and the battle phase. The adventure phase feels much more like a traditional "euro" co-op game, where players are working against the clock to try to find all the benefits they can while avoiding the unavoidable negative events. 

Combat in Doomrock is much more simplified than in similar games, but no less interesting. The fun part in pretty much any tactical combat game of this kind is gaining new abilities, and then getting to use those abilities in unique ways. Rarely is the "OK I have 5 movement, and I can go here, or here...or here..." part where very much of the fun lies. Doomrock cuts all of that out, and lets players focus on collaborating to assign and use their dice most effectively. 

One thing I didn't mention about the game is that there is no board. In fact, everything that isn't a token in this game is a card, so while set-up does take a little bit of time, the game has plenty of randomized elements involved in set-up, so there are likely millions of possible variations this game could take each time it is played.

Doomrock is a really fun game, and while I mentioned it does abstract out a lot, it remains a very solid, very engaging and involved cooperative game that will take a lot of teamwork and careful planning in order to succeed. 

If you think Assault on Doomrock sounds like a game you would like to play, head on over to the IndieGoGo page now to pledge your support to receive a copy when it releases this fall. The campaign is currently funded at nearly 200%, so now we're just looking towards stretch goals!

Forbidden Desert

The latest game in Matt Leacock's series of cooperative thrillers is Forbidden Desert.

In Forbidden Desert, the players are all archeologist-types (think Indiana Jones), and are looking to discover an ancient, buried, "flying machine."  (Which we now call airplanes, but, that's just being picky.)  However, they crash landed in the middle of a sand storm.  So, now they must find and rebuild the flying machine before they die of thirst!  How this works in game terms is that each player gets to take four actions per turn.  These actions can include any combination of movement, excavating an exposed tile, clearing sand off of a tile, and picking up a discovered part.  At the end of their turn, a certain number of sandstorm cards will be flipped, and each of these cards will cause the board to shift and for sand to blow onto the moved tiles (alternatively, the cards can cause the adventurers to all lose ("drink," if you will) some water).  If the players find all four parts of the ancient airplane and get to the runway in time, then they win.  If they get buried in the desert (run out of sand tiles), succumb to thirst, or take too long, then they lose!

My first pro for Forbidden Desert is that it has a very similar feel to his previous games (Forbidden Island and Pandemic) and yet truly stands on its own.  To be very honest about the matter, I almost decided to take a pass on Forbidden Desert, because I was expecting it to just be a rethemed version of Forbidden Island.  Fortunately, that is not the case.  Obviously one of the biggest differences is the theme.  But in the gameplay there are also a few major differences - specifically players are no longer drawing and matching cards (which was the crux of the past two games), and also the shifting board is a nice touch (similar to Forbidden Island's sinking tiles, but quite different).  I am glad to see that the comfortable feel of Pandemic has been taken and molded into a new experience with Forbidden Desert.

Finding clues for the flying machine's parts

The next pro that I have for Forbidden Desert is that I like how players find the parts of the flying machine.  Some of the tiles, when excavated, give clues as to a part's location.  Specifically, there are two clues per part - one clue will give you the row for the part, and the other clue will give you the column.  Thus, once you have found both clues, you may place the part on the board.  (It then can shift around, but will stay on the tile that you "discovered" it on.)  This is an interesting element, and I think that it fits well both thematically and mechanically.

The next pro that I have is that I like how the shifting sand works.  To start the game, you create a 5x5 grid of desert tiles, with the middle tile missing.  This missing tile is the center of the sandstorm.  At the end of each turn, when you are flipping storm tiles, the cards will show a certain number of tiles and point in a direction.  This describes how many tiles move towards the center of the storm, and also which direction the tiles come from.  Thus, the center of the storm is constantly moving.  This does a couple of things.  First, it can cause problems with your movement, if suddenly the center of the storm is adjacent to a player who was planning on moving into what is now an empty tile.  Second, it can potentially block a lot of tiles very quickly, as it is very possible for the same tile(s) to be moved multiple times on a turn.  (A tile is "blocked" if it has two sand tiles on it.)

Though I was quite pleasantly surprised by Forbidden Desert, there are still a couple of cons that I will mention for the game.  The first one is that Forbidden Desert still suffers from the "alpha player" problem.  Basically, what this means is that if you play with a very opinionated player, it can turn into a game where one person is playing the game, and everyone else is simply taking the actions that this player is telling them to do.  Yes, I realize that part of this is a problem with that player, and not necessarily with the game itself.  Yet, there have been several cooperative games recently (Hanabi and The Lord of the Rings LCG come to mind) that have found ways of mitigating this problem.  Forbidden Desert actually went the other way - the minor amounts of hidden information that were found in Forbidden Island and Pandemic (a player's hand) are no longer present in this one.  This time around, all information is public.

The very pretty flying machine that serves no real purpose

The other con that I have for Forbidden Desert is that it struck me as a bit more luck based than I would have liked.  Now, I realize that any time that you play a game with a deck of cards, there will be a luck of the draw element.  Yet, in Forbidden Desert, I had at least one game where the adventurers succumbed to thirst within the first 3-4 turns because all of the "Sun Beats Down" cards were stacked near the top of the deck.  There are ways of avoiding losing water - Solar Shields and Tunnels.  But, if the Sun Beats Down cards are at the top, then it is quite possible to have an adventurer (one of the ones that has a lower amount of starting water) die of thirst before you are able to successfully find either of these defenses.  Additionally, there is a decent amount of luck around how the storm moves.  Sometimes you will get a lot of "reprieves", where the tiles indicated can't actually move, and so nothing bad happens.  Conversely, you might not get any reprieves, in which case you probably won't win.

Overall, I give Forbidden Desert an 8.5/10.  It was a very pleasant surprise for me.  Whereas I was expecting to have a re-skinned version of one of my other games, I was happy to get an entirely new playing experience.  My biggest complaint from my experience with the game is that FedEx beat up my game before it ever got to me - and that's definitely not the game's fault!

If Forbidden Desert sounds interesting, you should also check out Wok Star, Castle Panic, and Flash Point.

I would like to thank GameWright for providing me with a review copy of Forbidden Desert.

Ghost Stories Review

One of my friend's favorite co-operative games is Ghost Stories; so I took the opportunity to play it.

In Ghost Stories, you take on the role of a Taoist priest that is fighting (along with three other priests) to excise Wu Feng from the world.  Unfortunately, Wu Feng has legions of ghostly minions, which are terrorizing you and your village.  Each turn, the active player reveals a ghost from the deck and places it on the board.  Next, they can move one space and take that space's action (if it has not been haunted).  Some of the actions include reviving a dead priest, rolling dice to gain more tao tokens, setting up a universal tao token that can be used in every fight, pushing ghosts away from the village, unhaunting village tiles, etc.  Conversely, instead of utilizing a space's action, you may choose to attack any adjacent ghosts.  Each ghost has a color and a strength.  In order to excise him, you roll three dice (and potentially add tao tokens).  If between the dice and your tao tokens you have enough strength in the ghost's matching color, then he is discarded.  Eventually, Wu Feng will emerge from the deck (if you don't die first).  If you are able to successfully defeat him before you all die or your village becomes especially haunted (you know - that time in a village's life when even the wind seems like it is whispering ghastly ramblings into your ear; oh - I mean three village tiles are haunted), then you win!

My first pro for Ghost Stories is that it does an amazing job of providing a feeling of "optimistic doom."  By this, I mean that you feel like you're going to lose.  From round one.  Yet, as the game progresses and you continue holding off your loss, you start to get the impression that you have a chance.  I doubt that you will ever feel like you just dominated a game of Ghost Stories.  Instead, you will constantly be balancing how you're going to keep your team just barely alive.  This might be by sacrificing a team member periodically to destroy an especially strong ghost, or it might be in pushing ghosts back for one more turn so that one of your fellow priests will have a chance to attack before being haunted.  What you do will never be enough to completely defeat the ghosts - but it may allow you to survive long enough to defeat Wu Feng!

It never hurts that it looks awesome

The next thing that I enjoy about Ghost Stories is that it truly encourages you to take advantage of your priest's special powers (which I haven't told you about).  Each priest has a different power - you might be able to move twice, collect a tao token each turn, ignore curse dice, or several other insanely useful things.  And, if you want to have any chance at victory, you will desperately fight to abuse these powers whenever possible.  For example - is one of you able to ignore the curse die?  Then they should fight every ghost that gives you a curse.  Can your priest move another priest?  Then you should move them to your location so that they can contribute their tao tokens in an upcoming battle.  Can you both attack and activate a location?  Then you need to make sure that you place ghosts so that they are adjacent to good locations that you want to activate.

The third pro I have for Ghost Stories is that I like how the die rolling is implemented.  When attacking a ghost, you roll the dice to see if you defeat them.  Any die roll that matches their color (or is white, which is wild), counts as a hit.  However, many ghosts have three or four hitpoints - which is very hard to defeat when you're only rolling three dice.  This is when tao tokens come into play.  Your priest can collect tao tokens (and there can be a universal tao token), and these tao tokens can be contributed towards your battle, thus counting as additional hits on the adjacent ghost(s).  This means that there is a random element in the game, but you can still mitigate the chances of getting frustrated by the dice.  And, occasionally you will even roll exceedingly well, thus keeping all of your tao tokens (for next time - because there will definitely be a next time).

Since no game is perfect, Ghost Stories has a couple cons that I feel are worth mentioning.  First, I think that bad luck can really make the game too overwhelming.  I already mentioned how the die rolling works, and how luck is somewhat mitigated when attacking ghosts.  Yet, sometimes the dice will completely defy the odds and you will lose an attack that you would win 99 out of every 100 times.  Yet, that's not really what I mean.  Where I think that bad luck can be too powerful is when rolling the curse die and drawing ghosts.  The curse die has two blank faces, and four awful faces.  The different rolls can cause you to haunt a space, lose all of your tao tokens, lose a life point, or draw and place a new ghost.  Some of these things can instantly cost you the game (the others might make you lose, but more slowly).  Similarly, when drawing ghosts, some of the ghosts cause you to draw another ghost.  If several of these are drawn in a row, then you can instantly go from surviving fairly well to being slaughtered by the game.  With any game that has random elements to it, luck can help you or hurt you.  But, though Ghost Stories mitigated the luck of die rolling when attacking, I wish they had mitigated the curse die a bit more.  (The different things that can be rolled are why you really want the priest that can ignore the curse die to take as many of the curses as possible.)

Good luck with these icons.

My second con for Ghost Stories is that the icons are not as clear as I would like.  I realize that this is a matter of playing the game more frequently so that you will learn what they all are.  Yet, the entire point of icons is to make the game easier to play - both to teach new players, and to remind old players of different game elements.  But, even after having played Ghost Stories a few times, there are still symbols that I don't know the meaning of because they come up very infrequently (such as the symbols on the different versions of Wu Feng).  When you play the game (especially your first few times) be ready to either ask other players what things means, or have the rulebook handy to clarify.

One last thing that I will mention about Ghost Stories (not really a pro or a con) is that it is only a four player game.  The box says 1-4, and there are rules for playing with less than four, but, ultimately, the entire game was designed for four.  The very setup of the game is dependent on having four player boards, and if less than four people are playing, then you will have each board activate, just like in a four player game.  There's nothing wrong with a game that requires a specific number of players, and you even can play this with less.  But, if you have a choice, I would recommend playing this with four so that you can avoid extra rules that work around you having less players.

Overall, I give Ghost Stories an 8.5/10.  Though it isn't my favorite cooperative game, it is still a highly enjoyable experience.  If the theme doesn't bother you, then you should definitely try it out.  (And, as an added bonus, Ghost Stories has several promotional Wu Feng cards that are puns.  Like "Chuck No Rice" and "Steven Qi Gal".  And, puns are wonderful!)

If you are looking for more cooperative games, you should also check out Lord of the Rings, Shadows Over Camelot, and Forbidden Island.

Hanabi Review

One of the most unique co-operative games that I've played recently is Hanabi.  (Sorry, no Amazon link. Also, my copy is actually of "Hanabi & Ikebana", but I'm yet to actually try Ikebana.  There are two sets available that I know of, the set that I own, and a set that only includes Hanabi and is in a nice tin box.)

In Hanabi, the players are working together to try to create the most amazing fireworks display that the world has ever seen.  To do this, obviously, the fireworks have to be shot off in order - this builds up to a nice crescendo.  Each player has a number of cards in their hand.  These cards face all of the other players, and the person holding them cannot see them.  On each turn, you have the option of doing one of three things: playing a card in your hand (each color must be played in order from 1-5; if the play is invalid, then you use one of your three strikes and lose your card), discard a card to gain a clue, or use a clue to tell one of the other players all of the information possible about either a number or color in your hand (such as "these *pointing to cards* are all of your red cards").  Once all three strikes are used, then the game is over, and the players count how many cards they successfully played.  Conversely, if the draw deck is exhausted, then each player gets one more turn, and then the game is over.  Scores run from 0-25, or 0-30, depending on if you are using the special "multicolored" fireworks (these are in my set, but not in the tin set, I believe).  If you get a perfect score - well, then you're much better at this game than I am, and you are free to leave a comment to gloat about your awesome Hanabi skills.

Whenever I talk to people about co-operative games, the response I inevitably get is, "yeah, but I could also just play that game by myself."  Either that, or they have played with that one jerk that is constantly telling everyone else what to do.  (Every group has one of these; it has been implied that I have even filled the role a few times.)  However, Hanabi addresses both of these issues.  Are you being bossy and telling everyone what to do?  Then you're probably cheating - because to tell someone what they should say (or play), you have to at least indicate something about someone else's card.  Plus, you have no idea what is in your hand!  You may have a hand full of critical cards, and if you'd just stop ordering people around for a minute, they'd tell you about what you have!  Also, you obviously can't play it by yourself.  That would just consist of not looking at any cards and blindly hoping you could play them in order.  That's not really much more fun than just counting how long you can keep your eyes shut without falling asleep.

Get used to staring at this.

The next pro that I have for Hanabi is that I like the social interactions that it invokes.  The game's strategy is as much about reading why people give you a certain clue as what the clue itself is.  If someone tells me that I have a single black card, what does that mean?  That's not especially helpful - after all, I don't know if it's legal to play or not.  I also don't know when it will be legal to play.  There's a good chance that they could have told me more than that.  However, if someone is pointing out a single card to me, that may be their way of saying, "this card can be legally played."  This gets tricky sometimes, though, especially when people communicate differently.  In the game, there is only one copy of each "5" card.  So, there could be a couple of different reasons someone might tell you that - it could be, "hey, you should play your 5," or "whatever you do, don't get rid of your 5!"  Do you see the important difference there?  Trying to work together to give clues that go beyond the clue itself is really what makes this game special and enjoyable.  (Of course, this is all dependent on who you play with.  There will be mis-communications.  More than other games, I think it's important to play to enjoy the game instead of to being hyper-competitive so that when these mis-communications occur, you are still able to enjoy spending time with each other.  Though, yes, I think that you should always be playing games to have fun.)

Now, though I think that Hanabi is a fabulous game (though I only listed two pros), there are a couple of cons.  First off, I feel like I'm always cheating in this game.  If you want to play by the strict rules of the game, then you really shouldn't be saying anything about what people might have except for what the clue allows.  You shouldn't be discussing with another player what to tell a third person, as you might let something slip.  You also have to be careful not to do things like "this card is a "3"... and so are these two."  (Which would be obviously telling them which one was the "3" that they were looking for.)  With this said - games are about having fun, so if you're willing to be a bit loose with some of these rules, then go for it.  It may make the game a bit too easy for you, though.

Putting on an amazing fireworks display!

The next con that I have for Hanabi is that the order in which you draw the cards is much more important than I would like.  Specifically, if everyone draws really high cards early in the game, then a perfect game may be impossible.  I have played at least one game where everyone had a bunch of 3's and 4's in their hand to start the game, with only a couple of 1's being drawn.  This forces everyone to discard cards in order to draw (hopefully) playable ones.  This really puts the game in a very perilous state, as it makes any single mistake much more costly.  (There are two copies of most cards in the deck.  But, if you've discarded one copy already, then discarding the second copy or attempting to play it unsuccessfully will prevent you from ever playing that card or any higher card in the same color.)

A third con, that I feel is somewhat minor, is that often during the game each player will settle into a role of clue giver, discarder, or player.  What I mean by this is that often the same people will be performing the same action repeatedly.  If I am never told anything about my hand, then I probably won't be playing anything.  I'll probably be giving clues.  Or, if I'm told nothing about my hand for long enough, then I may be just blindly discarding cards and assuming they're junk.  This can get somewhat boring and even a bit frustrating.  It's not an "oh my goodness, I hate this game" kind of frustration, but sometimes there will at least be a hint of "I sure wish I could play something."

Overall, I give Hanabi an 8.5/10.  It is an incredibly different take on the co-operative and social interaction genres that I think meshes together beautifully.  However, as I've played it more, I've realized how much the order that cards are drawn can affect the outcome of the game, and so it has knocked it slightly down from a more elite score.  It's still worth checking out, and I'd encourage all of the co-operative game naysayers to try it out!

If you are looking for interesting cooperative games you might also check out Space Alert, Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, and Mousquetaires du Roy (which is actually semi-cooperative).

Hooyah Review

Since I'm a big fan of co-operative games, I was intrigued by the chance to play Hooyah.

In Hooyah, the players represent a team of Navy Seals that are attempting to complete a Mission.  In order to complete this Mission, they must successfully execute several Operations, during which Events can occur that might impede their progress.  The game is broken up into a series of "Preparation" and "Ops" phases.  In the Preparation phase, players are able to draw two cards - either from a face up group, or from the deck.  They may also play Preparation Equipment cards.  When deciding on cards, they are generally looking for colors that match the current "Ops" cards.  Once the Lt. Commander (one of the roles), feels that the team is prepared for the Op, then they call "Hooyah" and the Op begins.  At this point, a number of Events are handed out to the players.  The Events can be skill checks that you can pass by discarding a matching card, they can force you to lose Health or cards based on a condition, and they can do a few other things.  Once all of the Events are completed, the team goes around playing cards until they play enough cards to pass the Op (for example, they might need 5 purple and 3 orange cards).  If they pass the Op, then they might gain extra Health, depending on how long was spent in Preparation.  If they fail the Op, they lose Health and start over on the Op, after discarding their hands.  After five Ops, they must immediately (no Preparation phase) each face one more Event, and then attempt their Mission (which works just like an Op).  If they succeed on the Mission, then they have won the game!

Completing an Op - Colors matter more than theme

The first thing to discuss about Hooyah before even getting into pros and cons for the game is the theme.  The theme is definitely American oriented, and more specifically, patriotic American oriented.  In fact, each of the missions is based off of a real life Navy Seal mission.  That part I think is pretty interesting (you could even call it a "pro").  One of the specific missions that people will probably easily recognize is "Mission: Compound Raid.  Objective: To capture or kill Osama bin Laden."  So, I think that some people will really enjoy the theme quite a bit.  However, I can see a lot of other people actually being turned off by it.  Yet, with all of that, I felt like the theme was a bit shallow when it came to actually playing the game.  Essentially you are worrying about matching colors much more than you are worried about why you are attempting to complete a Mission.  So, the Compound Raid is a "2 Yellow, 3 Red, 2 Blue," and this means much more to you during the game than anything else.

Now off to the pros and cons for the game.  The first pro that I have for Hooyah is that I felt like it had an interesting communication element.  Specifically, players were not allowed to discuss what they had in their hand.  Yet, if they drew their cards from the face up selection, then the other players would at least have some indication of how much they could help.  Yet, the face up selection often will provide irrelevant cards (though they might be helpful on later Ops or for skill checks), so you must decide between letting other players know what you have, and hoping to draw something useful.  And, after each completed Op, the Lt. Commander (LTC) has to remove one of the face up cards, so the public knowledge grows more scarce as the game progresses.  To mitigate some of this lack of communication, the LTC can perform a "Roll Call" at the end of his turn.  When doing this, each player goes around and says the number of cards that he would be able to play towards a single color (without stating which color it is).  This helps the LTC have a better indication of if the team is ready to begin the Op.  (As far as I'm aware, you are allowed to tell the LTC things like, "hey, lets go on the Op already!"  However, just how much you want to communicate like this should probably be discussed before starting the game, since much of the challenge is in guessing what people have.)

Now that I've gotten all of the pros out of the way for Hooyah, there were several things that I considered cons for the game.  First, is that there is an Event that states "Lose 1 Health for each completed Op."  Each player starts with 5 Health.  Various things throughout the game can gain you or cost you some of this Health.  However, for the most part, at least some players will have 5 Health or less.  There are 5 Ops in the game.  So, if you draw one of these Events after completing the 5th Op (when about to attempt the Mission), then you die.  Instantly.  With nothing you can do about it.  There are 2 Equipment cards in the deck that allow you to discard an Event card and draw another one.  One of the roles (Interrogator) allows you to do the same thing (once per game).  So, you can deflect a maximum of 3 of these nasty Events.  There are 6 in the deck.  And, most likely, you will not be prepared to deflect more than one of them.  So, at the end of the game, you are basically just hoping that you don't instantly die.  (I'm not really sure what this Event represents - all I can think is that it is your character stepping on a landmine!)

The Interrogator saves you.  Once.

This leads to the next con for Hooyah - the tension in the game doesn't seem balanced correctly.  In most co-operative games (Pandemic comes to mind) bad things are happening.  You try to keep them in check.  Slowly, you feel more and more like your hair is on fire, as there is nothing that you can do to stop the onrushing doom that is coming!  Your only hope is to reach the game end condition just seconds before you all die.  That's really one of the fun things about co-operative games - feeling like you're about to lose at any given moment, yet having the ability to reach out and steal a victory.  Hooyah is basically the exact opposite.  You very rarely actually feel like you're doing poorly.  In all of the games that I've played, we've been easily slaughtering the game.  And then, at the end, we hope that we don't draw an instant death card.  Because if we do, then we had a loss handed to us in the midst of our victory.

The last con that I had for Hooyah was that I felt like there weren't very many meaningful choices.  Basically, it was "hey, that card is the right color - I should draw it."  There are a few choices for the LTC to make - specifically, when should the team attempt the Op, but most everything else is a bit trivial.  Part of this, I believe, is that the Equipment cards don't serve much of a role.  I believe that one of the choices that you are intended to make is "should I use this Equipment card."  (Equipment cards can do things like letting you discard two other cards to make a card of the needed color.)  However, since the game is generally easy enough that you don't need to utilize the Equipment, you get back to just drawing the matching color and hoping to not draw the death Event.

Overall, I give Hooyah a 6.5/10.  The game functions, but without much of the excitement that I've found in most other co-operative games.  Plus, doing very well throughout the game and then suddenly losing because of a single Event card can definitely leave a sour taste in the mouth of new players.

If you like co-operative games, you might also check out Yggdrasil, Defenders of the Realm, and Space Alert.

I would like to thank U.S. Games Systems for providing me with a review copy of Hooyah.

Top Ten Cooperative or Solo Board Games - Summer 2012

Last January, I decided to start doing an occasional top ten list.  They're fun to write, and they can start interesting discussions!  Now, please keep in mind that this list is completely my own opinion, and that means that it only contains games that I've personally played.  If you think that I'm missing anything, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Most of these games I've reviewed, but a few of them I haven't yet.  If I've reviewed it, then I'll give you a link to my review.  With all that said, here come my

Top Ten Cooperative and/or Solo Games!!

 

10. Yggdrasil

You can tell that this is a list of amazing games when Yggdrasil only comes in at #10! Players take on the role of Norse gods protecting the holy tree by fighting off ice giants and all kinds of other mythical monsters.

9. Shadows Over Camelot

Shadows Over Camelot was a lot higher on my original list until I realized that it was cheating. I absolutely love this game, but only when playing with the possibility of a traitor. This dropped it down this far on the list - but it is definitely a highly recommended game!

8. Wok Star

Z-Man Games has promised to do a large print run of Wok Star for a few years, and having played the original Gabob version, I think that they would make a lot of money if they did so! This co-operative game uses real-time elements to force players to work together to ensure that everything happens before the timer runs out!

7. Space Alert

Another unique title, Space Alert forces the players to coordinate the defense of their space station.  But... it has a sound track!  How many games can claim that?  Each of the games only lasts about 10 minutes - but those 10 minutes are frantic as everyone tries to program his character's movement (and double check them to make sure he isn't the weak link on the team). This game really works a lot better than I was initially expecting, and gives a pleasantly stressful gameplay experience!

6. Hanabi

A game that I'm still looking to add to my collection, Hanabi refutes the claim that "all cooperative games can be played solo." Hanabi is all about trying to figure out how to communicate effectively with other players so that they know what they have available to play. The theme (shooting off fireworks) is a bit cheesy, but the mechanics help this game score highly on my list.

5. Lord of the Rings (Knizia Version)

Ok, so "Lord of the Rings" isn't an uncommon name for board games, but this is the co-op that Reiner Knizia created around 2003. This game seems to be one of the originators of this genre, and is still fun to play and sports a different feel than the other titles on this list. I have all of the (now out of print) expansions in my closet, regularly begging me to play them.

4. Flash Point: Fire Rescue

Ok, now we're getting down to some tough decisions. This game jumped up to the top of my list very, very quickly. I really debated placing it as high as #2 on this list! The theme really makes this game beautiful, but some slight fiddliness keeps it from cracking the top 3.

3. Pandemic

This game might not deserve a place quite this high on the list, but it is the game that introduced me to the genre - and made me fall in love with it. I know many people have claimed that they have "mastered" Pandemic - but, I'd imagine that they've played it dozens of times (and still occasionally lose). Shouldn't a game that calls you back dozens of times land pretty high on a top ten list? I think it should.

2. Friday

Ok, now to get more controversial - Friday is the only truly solo game on this list. However, after trying out Friday, I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you ever travel for business, I recommend that you invest the roughly $20 that it costs to throw a copy of Friday in your carry-on. It's brilliant.

1. Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game

If you've been following my site for a while, Lord of the Rings: LCG coming it at #1 probably doesn't surprise you. I think that this game is amazing - plus, with the continual release of new adventures, the gameplay is constantly shifting. More than any others on this list, I can see people investing hours upon hours in Lord of the Rings, and I can see their interest stay strong for years to come.

Honorable Mentions

It amazes me that some of these titles didn't make it. However, other very solid co-operative games include Defenders of the Realm, Legend of Drizzt, Castle Panic, Sentinels of the Multiverse, and Forbidden Island. There's also a little game called Ghost Stories - I need to play this game at some point to see if it should be on the list next time!

So, what do you think?  Anything that I missed?  Any "oh my goodness, how did he rank that so high (or low)?"  Feel free to let me know in the comments!

Flash Point: Fire Rescue Review

FIRE!!!!  What?  Oh right - that's the theme of Flash Point: Fire Rescue.

Flash Point is a cooperative game in which the players take on the role of firefighters attempting to save victims from a burning building.  As with all fires, things can get unpredictable, and it's difficult to initially know where all of the victims are.  Each turn consists of spending four action points (this can be different on some characters).  You can use action points to move (and the cost is modified if you're moving through fire, with a victim, or carrying hazardous materials), open/close a door, extinguish smoke and/or fire, chop through a wall, drive the fire engine and/or ambulance, change crewmen, or fire the deck gun.  Any unspent actions are saved until the next turn.  Next, you roll dice to see where the fire spreads.  There are lots of rules we won't go into, but this can lead to large numbers of explosions and a lot of smoke turning into fire very quickly.  Finally, if there are less than 3 "POI" (victims and/or false alarms) on the board, more are added.  Once you have rescued 7 victims (by carrying them to the ambulance), you win!  (Or, on a harder difficulty, once you have lost 4 victims, you lose.  Or, if you run out of damage cubes, the building collapses and the game is over.  It doesn't explicitly say it, but I'm going to go ahead and say you lose then, too.)

Cool firemen meeples - feeples!

The first thing that I like about Flash Point is that I can save action points.  Rather, I love that I can save action points.  This game (along with all cooperative games that have come out recently) is often compared to Pandemic, so I might as well start the comparisons now. The fact that I often wasted an action in Pandemic is really nuisancey.  I love the fact that I can save them in Flash Point.  Plus, it just makes sense.  Moving into fire or while carrying a victim costs 2 action points.  If you couldn't save action points, you would often waste them simply because you had an odd number of points left.  Thematically, it seems to represent the fact that you moved halfway to the next location, and mechanically, it works really well, too.  After all, if all you do is save action points, then the fire will overwhelm you while you sit and watch, so it's really a self-regulating mechanic.

Speaking of theme, that is definitely my second pro.  In my opinion (which is the main one you'll find here), the game is bursting with theme.  Now, I don't really care especially much if a game even has a theme, but when it has great mechanics and a great theme, it's wonderful.  I really think that the theme is most noticeable when resolving the end of turn "advance fire" rolls.  I don't know the designer, but I have a hard time imaging him as anything other than a firefighter.  The rules are just too specific for me to think he is anything else - I really think that they came from years of dealing with real fires.  Smoke re-ignites into fire, flare ups in the building can quickly cause havoc all over the place, improperly stored cleaning materials can explode.  Then, you can also chop through walls to get to your POI's - and after all of that, it might have been a false alarm!

One of the unique roles

My third pro for Flash Point is that I really like the different roles.  The roles in Flash Point are much more distinct than in any other cooperative game that comes to mind.  Most cooperative games have the same character, but with slightly different benefits.  In Flash Point, the different characters have different amounts of action points, and are very specialized at performing specific actions.  For example, the Rescue Specialist can be a critical part of the team.  She gets her normal 4 action points, plus 3 extra movement points.  However, if she is fighting fire (which is not what she's good at), it costs double the number of action points.  This means it would cost all 4 of her normal action points to put out a fire on a single square.  But, not only do I really like the roles, I also love the fact that you can change out roles.  Now, this is probably one of the more shaky things to me, thematically (along with the fact that you get the same credit for saving a cat as a person - and it takes the same number of action points to carry a cat and a person... I digress...), but mechanically it is very helpful.  If you start your turn on the fire engine, then you can use 2 action points to take one of the unused characters and continue the game with that character.  Again, mechanically, this is amazing.  But, thematically, are there really lots of firefighters sitting around waiting to be tagged in?  I guess to an extent, everyone might not rush in at once until they know more about the situation, but it still seems odd.

The one point of the game that I'll mention before getting to cons is dice rolling.  It's important to realize that, to simulate the randomness of a fire, the "advance fire" part of the turn involves a lot of dice rolling.  As with any dice game, this means that crazy things can happen.  Rolling dice never works out statistically how it "should" (if I roll a 1 on a 6-sided die, and then I roll it again, it's not going to be friendly and go "oh, he rolled a 1 last time - I shouldn't roll that again until he's seen all the other numbers.")  What this means in game terms is that you might be able to extinguish a lot of the early fires and then just deal with smoke popping up.  Or, you might roll flare ups every turn and have the entire building explode regardless of how well you (intended to) play the game.  In the games I have played, the dice have worked well and have been a good balance of explosions and smoke.  However, in one of the games we played, nobody rolled any flare ups until one person rolled about 4 of them in a row.  This is just something to be aware of.

Really, I only have one con for Flash Point.  The advance fire section of the game is a bit fiddly.  I think that there are two reasons for this - first, there are simply a lot of steps that you have to check for and then perform if appropriate.  Second, Flash Point uses similar sounding firefighting terms that aren't part of my normal vocabulary.  For example, what's the difference between a "Flashover" and a "Flare Up"?  I've played the game several times, and I still had to just look up which one was which.  This causes you to spend a decent amount of time grabbing the instructions and going, "ok, what was that again?"  After you play it through several times, this upkeep phase will become much more fluid, but it still remains a touch fiddly.

Overall, I give Flash Point a 9.0/10.  I expected it to be a good game, but what I found was a game that rivals Pandemic or any other cooperative games, trying to be my favorite.

If you want a second opinion, check out the Board Game Family's Flash Point: Fire Rescue. If you want to read about other cooperative games, you should check out Yggdrasil, Space Alert, and Forbidden Island.

I would like to thank Indie Board & Cards for providing me with a review copy of Flash Point: Fire Rescue.

Space Alert Review

So, about a month ago, I got an email from one of my wonderful readers.  The email was pretty simple - just asking for me to review Space Alert.  Well, I had coincidentally just acquired a copy of the game the weekend before, and so I did my best to get the review turned around in a timely manner.  In fact, I'm posting it approximately one month after the request (having never played the game when she asked)!  Yes, I'm quite proud of myself (and am now verbally patting myself on the back).  Hopefully, that person is still reading my blog!

In Space Alert, your crew is taking your ship out to explore uncharted sectors of space.  Unfortunately, (as when Q sent the Enterprise to unexplored space and they encountered the Borg in Star Trek), you have no idea what you will encounter.  Even more unfortunately, encountering friendly aliens that want to help you can make for a good TV show, but makes for a lousy game - and so, everything you encounter is trying to kill you.  Space Alert plays very differently than most games.  After setting up the game, you play a 10 minute sound clip, and (as a team) you plan all of your actions during those 10 minutes.  During the track, you will be setting up your actions to determine what your character will be doing on the ship - moving, firing lasers and rockets, charging shields, recharging energy supplies, fighting intruders, and more.  Once the track is complete, you resolve all of the actions that you planned, and you see if your ship survived.  If so, great!  You win.  If not.... well.... good thing it's a game.

The first pro that I have for Space Alert is that it is a very innovative game.  You very rarely have a game that comes with some kind of media interaction (well, unless you play video games).  The last game that I can remember doing something like this is the old Star Trek Interactive VCR game that I had as a child.  Fortunately, the creators of Space Alert planned ahead a bit more than the Star Trek creators - they provide several different ways to play the tracks.  You can use the CDs that are provided, download mp3 tracks to use on an iPod, or (if desperate) even have a person with a timer read aloud what happens.  And, unlike my Star Trek VCR game, though there are only a few different tracks (around 8 I think), the tracks don't limit the replayability.  Instead, the track will call out that a threat is appearing and coming towards a certain part of your ship - but the replayability lies in the different threats that might appear.  There are several different threats provided, and there are even different difficulties of threat, so the game will stay fresh for quite a while.

You must protect this ship!

The second thing that I like about Space Alert is that it is a cooperative game that really requires cooperation!  I have played a lot of cooperative games - I really like them.  However, people are always quick to point out that you can really play any of them solo.  Though I do not prefer that, I can understand this argument.  You can also run into issues where one person bosses everyone else around and ruins the fun for everyone.  Space Alert avoids these issues.  There is simply too much going on for one player to run the game for everyone else.  If each player isn't paying attention to what's going on and coordinating with all of the other players, then the mission will quite possibly be doomed.  Lack of communication can cause critical issues - such as a player shooting a laser that doesn't have enough energy to actually fire, because another player already used their energy (or failed to charge it as they were supposed to).  You can also get in each other's way on the elevators.  Or you can redundantly attack the same threat while a different threat is left unimpaired.  Or not realize that another player expected you to coordinate an attack.  (Or.... or... or...)  Coordination is critical in this game.

The third thing that I will mention as a pro for Space Alert is that you do not have to do all of this coordination blindly.  I was very concerned when I first heard about Space Alert, because I thought it would be way too much like Robo Rally or Epigo. In fact, they share a core mechanic - you program in all of your moves and then afterwards you execute them.  However, in Space Alert, you are allowed to (encouraged to) move pieces around on the board.  Also, you setup your actions during three different phases.  What worked very well when I played was for us to setup the board and move things around so that we would know what the game setup should be at the beginning of each of these phases.  This doesn't handle all of the coordination (there will still be lots of questions like, "what step are you charging the energy in, again?"), but it really, really helps.  I probably wouldn't play the game if you just had to remember where you are and what the state of everything is while hoping for the best.  In fact, there is even a rule called "tripping" that helps people like me - if you screw up and place a card the wrong way (or place the wrong card), then you can "trip" and do what you intended, but you are penalized by delaying your future actions (shifting them down the action track).  This can be really important if you place an order incorrectly really early in the game (and so you wind up in the wrong room... for the rest of the game).  And, let's just be clear - this will happen at some point.  It happened to me, and I'm sure that I'm not the first one to have this happen (or else the rule wouldn't be there).

He's not "friendly."

Now, here's the big thing to talk about.  The CD.  Yes, I said that it is innovative (though "unique" and "uncommon" might be better words).  Some people will think that this is amazing.  Some people will absolutely hate it (I got the game from someone who was getting rid of it because his gaming group hated it).  Either way, it will probably limit the places you can play the game - I choose not to play this at one of my normal gaming groups, because it could be really annoying to the other groups of people playing games in the same room.  Overall, I don't love the soundtracks, but they also don't bother me.  I like that it forces a more frantic game speed (which I believe is the intention behind it).  Also, it adds to the theme of the game, which is a plus.

I guess the main thing that I don't like about the game is how much one small error can have epic consequences.  I realize that this is part of the game, and that's why I didn't even bother using the term "con."  It's simply something that I'm not a fan of.  Yes, the trip rule helps with this quite a bit, but you can still be completely obliterated if you are in the wrong place because you didn't coordinate correctly.  Really, I'm even fine with that.  I think that I ultimately dislike that getting yourself in the wrong position very early in the game can cause the rest of the game to go poorly, because the game never resets itself.  This is a minor thing, but it was the biggest negative that came to mind.

Overall, I give Space Alert an 8.5/10.  Like Wok Star, it's not a game that I'm going to want to play 5-7 times in a row.  It's going to be more of a game that I think, "ok, that was fun; now what are we playing?"  Note - I did say that it is fun.  But, the frantic pace and the soundtrack will prevent me from wanting to play it for hours at a time.

For a second opinion, you might want to read this Space Alert Review on Play Board Games. Or, if you want to check out more cooperative games, you might also read my reviews of Wok Star (which I just mentioned), Shadows Over Camelot, and Legend of Drizzt.