Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I was introduced to this game two weeks ago, and bought my own copy the very next day. Since then, I've introduced several other friends to it, and it's gotten approval from everyone.
The idea behind the game is that your group (ideally 4 or 5 players; it's not as fun with 3 or fewer) are on a spaceship, and you need to defend it from various threats that appear (asteroids, alien ships, etc). The game is divided into two parts. During the first part, you play an MP3 that announces when and where new threats occur, and you play cards to plan out your sequence of actions to defend against the threats. When the MP3 is over, time's up! During the second part of the game, you replay all the action cards from the first part, to see what actually happened (the second part is completely deterministic; all choices are made in the first part).
The game is very chaotic, but a whole lot of fun. Communication and teamwork are really important; if you don't work as a team, you're doomed to failure (which can still be very entertaining). Unlike other co-op games (Pandemic, Arkham Horror), having one commander-in-chief do all planning for everyone does not work in this game; there's just too much going on too quickly. This helps draw the less assertive players into the game, since their roles cannot be taken over by someone else.
The mention of the MP3 dictating what happens might sound like the game can get boring with repetition. This is not the case! The MP3 will tell you to draw random threats that will attack your ship, so which enemies you fight will vary from game to game. Other random elements that make every game unique include which action cards you are dealt and the length of the tracks down which the threats move and act. On top of that, the game comes with two CDs worth of soundtracks, with varying difficulty. This means that as your team becomes better at playing the game, you can adjust the difficulty level so it's still a challenge. There is also a random mission generator online at [1], if you somehow manage to get bored with the included MP3s.
Despite the randomness and the chaos, there's always a feeling that it's possible to control. Even in the games we lose, we can see how we could have done something different to win. So, the randomness does a good job of keeping the game fresh without it feeling like a luck-of-the-draw sort of thing.
The realtime aspect of the game is something I haven't seen anywhere else. Sure, other games have involved some audio content, but here it's an integral part of play. Because of this, Space Alert has won several "most innovative game of the year" awards, including a Dice Tower Gaming Award, a Spiel des Jahres prize, and a BoardGameGeek Golden Geek award.
I highly recommend this game.
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Space Alert is a team survival game. Players take on the role of a crew of space explorers sent out through hyperspace to survey a dangerous sector of the Galaxy.The spaceship automatically maps the sector in 10 minutes. The crew's task is to defend the ship until the mission is complete. Ifthey succeed, the ship brings back valuable data. If they fail... it is time to train a new crew.Space Alert is not a typical board game. Players do not compete against each other. Instead, they work together against the challenge presented by the game. The difficulty of this challenge can be chosen by the players themselves. Completing the most difficult missions requires close teamwork.Game Contents: * 1 Spaceship Board * 10 Action Boards in 5 Colors * 7 Trajectory Boards * 1 Mission Steps Board * 10 Plastic Figures * 55+ blocks in 6 Colors * 1 Blue and 3 Green Cylinders * 90 Action Cards * 6 Heroic Action Cards * 55 Threat Cards * 16 Scenario Cards * 18 Damage Tiles * 26 Internal Threat Tokens * 16 Numbered Tokens * 2 CDs with 16 Soundtracks * 1 Ship's Log * 1 Rulebook * 1 "How to Become a Space Explorer" Handbook
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