Space Alert, Part 2: Gameplay & Verdict

In our last article we took our first step back into the world of regular reviewing, by taking a look at the box contents for Vlaada Chvatil's Space Alert, published by Rio Grande Games.  Space Alert is a co-operative game for 1-5 players (side note: we'd love to know how a competitive game for 1 player would work... answers on a postcard), in which the players take on the roles of expendable crew members on a short-range interstellar vessel.  Here we'll be taking a look at how the game plays, and giving it our coveted* final score (*Games & Tea final score may not actually be coveted).

Before the game can begin, players must first of all squabble amongst themselves over their roles in the crew.  As mentioned in the box contents article, the pace of the action is dictated by the ship's computer - relayed either via the accompanying CD or the smartphone app.  This means that one crew member must be designated as the communications officer.  Whilst all hell is breaking loose on board the ship, robots are malfunctioning, and aliens are attacking, it's the duty of the communications officer to closely listen to the ship's computer and ensure that no updates are missed.  Obviously all crew members can hear these updates, but the comms officer is the expendable man or woman responsible for none of them slipping through.

The other role to be assigned is that of the ship's captain.  Space Alert is a co-operative game, but it's also a real-time one, which means that there is rarely enough time to sit around and discuss various options to a newly revealed threat.  The ship's captain serves two purposes: firstly, to have the final say on any conflicting courses of action from the other crew members, and the other we'll come to shortly.

"Captain's log, stardate Tuesday... point two."

Once the crew roles are have handed out, it's time to set up the board.

As the first part of this review showed, there are a fair few components to Space Alert.  In spite of this, however, the setup process of the game is actually very quick and straightforward.  Threat Vectors are randomly drawn and assigned to the four sections of the ship previously mentioned (left, right, center, and internal), the jelly cubes representing the power to the ship's systems are assigned to their starting points, the threat decks are shuffled (internal and external still kept separate), the combat robots sent to their charging stations, and the crew members placed on the bridge.  If all has been done properly, you'll be left staring at something like this...

Then it's time to hand out the Action Cards and start the game!  You may have noticed in Part 1 of the review that the Action Boards are split into three sections, containing the numbers 1-3, 4-7, and then 8-12 respectively...

These are the three mission sections, and the individual numbers represent the turns of the game (we know, we said this was a real-time game, but all will make sense as you read on!).  Before the game starts, each player is dealt 5 Action Cards for each section of the board, which are placed on those sections face-down.  The computer will call out the beginning and end of each mission section - during the active section, each player may assign Action Cards to any turns they wish, and rearrange them as many times as necessary to adapt to changing circumstances.  Once the mission section is over, however, and the next section begins, those Action Cards are then locked in place and cannot be changed.

Each room of the ship has contains three different buttons; A, B and C (easy to remember!).  Button A fires the weapons system in whichever room the player is standing at the time, button B is used for raising the shields or charging the reactor, depending on location, and button C is a bit more specialist, being used to fire missiles, maintain the computer, launch fighters, activate robots, or just look out the window (no, we're not even joking about that final one!). Each Action Card includes a movement arrow and one of those three actions, so players can choose to use them to either move around the ship or activate one of the ship's systems.

The trick in Space Alert is to make sure that the crew are accounting for all of the ship's systems.  Firing the lasers and charging the shields both draw energy from the ship's reactor, and that reactor must be periodically refilled.

Now pay attention, crew, for this is where the second role of the captain comes into effect!

Actions are resolved in order, starting from the captain and working clockwise around the board, so it's important for players to keep this in mind when planning their moves.  It's great to charge the reactor in preparation for a full-on laser bombardment, but if the person charging the reactor is taking their turn after those firing the weapons, then all you'll be left with is a crew member hammering on an innefective 'fire' button whilst a colossal alien warship descends upon you!

Let's have a look at an example below...

In this scenario, the blue player has locked their choices in for the first two mission sections, but the third has not yet begun.  When deciding whether to move or activate a system, the top half of the Action Card is the one to go by.  In this run here the player fired the ship's lasers (A), moved to the room on the left, charged the shields (B), took the elevator down, refilled the reactor (B), went back up in the elevator, and then fired the lasers (A).

Obviously players may not always have the cards in their hands for the actions they'd like to take, and this is where it becomes important to organise amongst eachother.  It's not all doom and gloom though, as the computer will occasionally call out "incoming data" or "data transfer", which allow players to draw new cards or exchange between eachother respectively.

The most important thing which the computer will call out are threats.  Only one threat can appear during each turn, so if the computer calls out "Time T-1, threat blue", it means that a threat will start approaching in turn 1 on the right hand section of the ship (the blue section)...

Here a sneaky Stealth Fighter has just appeared.  It begins at the top of the Threat Vector and advances each turn.  Every time it passes a letter on the Vector, it carries out the action marked on the card - for example, the Stealth Fighter cannot be attacked until it hits the X.  Once it hits the Y it deals 2 damage to the ship, and then another 2 when it hits Z, so it's in the best interests of the crew to blow it out of the stars before that can happen.

The mission continues for 12 minutes, as the crew tries to keep everything in working order and the ship in one piece, up until the computer mercifully calls out "hyperspace jump in 3, 2, 1... *whoosh*", and you all live to fight another day.

...or do you?

At the end of the box contents article there was a board we skipped over, so this comes into effect now.  It turns out that during the 12 minutes of real-time action the players are basically just planning out which actions they're going to take in each of the 12 turns.  This card is effectively the black box recording for the crew's (probably) ill-fated mission, and only once the CD/app track has finished do the players finally play through the actions and see how everything actually panned out.

This part of the game can prove absolutely hilarious, and it's fun for the players to now imagine themselves as a board of directors, face-palming their way through a 12-minute recording of the most inept crew in existence.

Indeed, in one of the USS Games & Tea's first outings, our illustrious communications officer was convinced he'd saved the day against that pesky Stealth Fighter.  In reality, he hadn't realised the targeting restriction on it, spent two turns firing the laser at empty space until the reactor was empty, and then watched in absent-minded glory as the Stealth Fighter proceeded to tear the ship to pieces.  We can only imagine the letter which must have been handed over to his next of kin.  

Now it might seem fairly straightforward from this description, but it's the little things which make Space Alert special.  For example, as the "How to..." manual states, there is no video link between the rooms on the ship, only audio, so players must place their Action Cards face-down on the Action Boards.  This means that all players MUST communicate with eachother, as they can't simply sneak a peek over at their shipmates' boards to see what they're up to.  One of the problems with this is that there will occasionally be a communications malfunction replacing the CD track with static, during which period the crew must continue without speaking to eachother until it's resolved.

Other little touches can involve tripping over, being delayed in the elevators, running into bulkheads... if an incompetent crew of space-wannabes can do it, it's probably in Space Alert somewhere (one of our captains still tells heroic tales of the time he spent 3 turns staring out of the window as the ship disintegrated around him).

In terms of mechanics, there's not much more to tell really.  We've skimmed over some of the finer points, but those are for you discover on your own!  What did we think of it as a game though?

In a nutshell, this might be the finest co-operative game we've ever played.  It's intensive for those 12 real-time minutes, but that's a short-enough time to be fun rather than stressful.  Once the real-time section ends and the turn-based resolution begins, then it just becomes a very light hearted and humour-based game, and is terrific fun to have with friends.

One of the greatest things about Space Alert is that each player still very much feels like they're part of the game.  A big problem with many co-op games (Pandemic being a perfect example), is that the turns often devolve into 'turns by committee'.  Rather than each player taking their own actions, their turns end up being weighed up and discussed based on the actions of the preceeding and following players, and so individuality becomes lost entirely.  The fact that Space Alert is a real-time game eliminates this entirely, as there is simply not time to weigh up every option.  Players call out their planned actions, and have to work around eachother as they go, but their decisions and actions still feel very much their own, and this is an unbelievably rare thing in co-op games.

There are a lot of random elements to the game, especially with the addition of the smartphone app - the encounters are randomised, threats are randomised, Action Cards are randomised, damage to the shop is randomised... basically, there's enough to make sure that you'll never play the same game of Space Alert twice.

The short play time is also a massive bonus.  It's difficult to get bored when you're playing a game which only takes around half an hour, and is keeping you on your toes for every minute!  Whilst it's possible to customise the app with various difficulty settings, the default setting for Space Alert is incredibly challenging, and so it's very easy to fall into the "one more round" mentality, in an attempt to finally beat the game.  It's worth noting that here at Games & Tea we've never managed to win a game on the default setting yet, but the fact we'll still shout the game's praises from the rooftops shows that we consider it an enjoyable challenge, rather than a frustrating one.

As we've mentioned in previous reviews though, no game is perfect.  Space Alert comes pretty darn close, but we strongly doubt we'll ever see the unicorn that is the perfect game.  We stated above that there are a lot of random elements, and one criticism of the game is that there are perhaps too many.  The real-time section of the game is all about planning out your course of action, so when virtually every facet of the game is unpredictable, this can be a monumental challenge.  The counter argument to this would be that it makes for a more authentic gaming experience, but this is perhaps one of those times were authenticity and playability should perhaps be weighed against eachother.

The next downside is the learning curve.  The 'training program' is an inspired decision, and is a fool-proof way of teaching the complexities of Space Alert to new players.  The problem with this is that every time another new player joins the group, the experienced players have to sit through the comparatively slow-paced training missions again until everyone's up to speed.  In fact the first few weeks with the game at our FLGS seemed to be mired in training missions, as there was always someone new who wanted to try it out, taking us all back to square one.

The other negative point to Space Alert is that it doens't work quite as well with fewer players.  It's impossible to play the game with fewer than four crew members, so if there are three players or less then the extra crew members are controlled by everyone, and each player received extra Action Cards in each section to make up for this.  While this is probably the best way to resolve the issue of fewer players, it still doesn't work particularly well, and a single-player game of Space Alert is pretty much unplayable.

The Good Points

• Space Alert is the first truly co-operative game we've played, as opposed to a 'turn by committee' game.
• 4 and 5 players are accommodated nicely, making it a good game for slightly larger groups.
• The real-time element makes it a fun and frantic game, and the 'black box' resolution card brings the game to a very entertaining conclusion.
• There are enough random elements to make every single playthrough different.
• Excellent tutorial mode.
• Extremely challenging.
• The computer soundtrack makes the game very immersive.

The Bad Points

• Perhaps too many random elements, leaving little room for planning.
• The game fails to deliver with only 1 or 2 players.
• Constantly repeating the training missions for new players can be frustrating.

Recommended Number of Players: 4-5

As mentioned above, Space Alert doesn't really work with 1 or 2 players.  3 should be considered the minimum for a decent game, but it plays best with 4 or 5, as this eliminates the need for a collectively-controlled extra crew member.

Average Game Time: 30 minutues

The playthrough time on Space Alert is pretty standard.  The real-time section is always around 12 minutes (once the training missions have been passed), and the resolution stage usually takes a little longer, so a single sitting clocks in around the half-hour mark.

Replay Value: Very High

With a relatively short play time, high number of randomly-generated elements, and challenging gameplay, Space Alert has all of the right ingredients for a highly replayable game.  With expansions available to enhance the game further, this is one which we can't imagine gathering dust for a very long time.

The Future: Lost to the Depths of Space...

Space Alert is a fantastic game, and the The New Frontier expansion adds even more to this, but as far as we can tell this is the extend of the Space Alert story.

Price: £40

Space Alert will set you back £40, meaning it's not one of the cheapest games out there, but not one of the most expensive either.  We'd certainly say that we've got our money's worth out of it.  In terms of availability, we rarely see it on the shelves in gaming stores, but being from a large manufacturer it should be easy enough to order in.

OVERALL SCORE: 9.5/10

Tea consumed during this review: Twinings English Afternoon, 3 minutes brew time, 2 sweeteners, dash of milk. Brew rating: 10/10

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Space Alert, Part 1: Box Contents

Well at this point we certainly can't be accused of keeping on top of our game reviews!  For many and varied reasons we've dropped off the face of the gaming earth for the last several months, but just because we haven't been reviewing doesn't mean we haven't been playing!  Obviously the downside is that our readership numbers have dropped off, and we can't blame anyone for that, but on the plus side it now means we have a bunch of games which we have well and truly played to death, which we're ready to approach with a reviewers mindset now!

So to end our reviewing drought, we're going to be taking a look at Space Alert by Vlaada Chvatil, from Rio Grande Games.

Space Alert is a co-operative board game for 1-5 players, set on a short-range interstellar exploration vessel which is apparently entirely crewed by people dressed like Cyclops from X-Men.  The role of the ship is a simple one: execute a hyperspace jump to a nearby sector of space, spend 12 minutes scanning the area, and then hyperspace jump back to Earth to report the findings.  The ship is pre-programmed to carry out its mission.  The ship knows what it's doing.  The ship is valuable.

The crew are not.

That's right, Nostromo-wannabes, you're expendable (not to be confused with The Expendables, although if you're the captain I suppose you can order everyone else to call you 'Stallone').  The job of the crew on this noble voyage is to make sure that the ship stays in one piece for long enough to make that return jump, although with giant space jellyfish, malfunctioning robots, saboteurs and nuclear warheads, that's not going to be an easy task!

But we'll be getting into the real gritty details of the gameplay in the second part of the review.  For now, as always, we're going to be taking a look at the box contents so you know what to expect when you... well... examine the contents of the box.

Now just to be a bit different we're not going to start with the board, but with the rulebook.  Or, more accurately, the rulebooks.  As any self-respecting game should do, it comes with an in-depth (though, mercifully, not lengthy) rulebook with all of the gameplay mechanics clearly explained.  It also includes a second rulebook, entitled "How to be a Space Explorer in Seven Lessons".

Seeing as Space Alert is quite a complex game, it has a fantastic method of teaching new players how to play.  The "How to..." book is laid out and annotated like a training manual for space cadets, and slowly introduces players to the rules over a series of short training missions, by the end of which they'll have absorbed the full set of rules and are ready to play the game in full.  In fact the "How to..." book encourages new players to put the full rulebook to one side and start with just the guide, and everyone at Games & Tea has found it to explain the game perfectly, and trained us all up into fully expendable space explorers in no time.

Next up: the board.  The board in Space Alert gives an overview of the ship's layout, with the various ships systems, access doors/elevators, and so forth.  We were unsure earlier about whether to class Space Alert as a board game, as typically a gaming board features some kind of goal or endgame.  Here, the board is basically there just to keep a visual track on the chaos, as your crew desperately fights to keep the precious company property in spaceworthy condition.

We then come to the Threat Vectors.  Whenever an obstacle appears to threaten the ship, from within or without, its progress is tracked on an appropriate Threat Vector.  The threat vectors determine how quickly the threat reaches a catastrophic state, and how many times it deals slightly less catastrophic damage to the ship in the process.  One is assigned to the left-hand (red) side of the ship, one to the center (white), one to the right (blue), and one to the ship's interior.  There are seven of these in the game, but only a maximum of four are ever used, which allows for an element of randomisation.

If you're going to have Threat Vectors then you'd better damn well have some threats!  There are two Threat Decks in Space Alert, which are shuffled to add further randomisation.  The green deck consists of internal threats, so you'll find things like boarding parties, robot malfunctions, hacked shields and so on within this deck.  The purple deck consists of external threats, so this is where you'll be faced with stealth fighters, juggernauts, meteors, and the previously-mentioned giant space jellyfish.  The threats have various strengths and weaknesses, so it's up to the crew to work together to combat these before they tear the precious ship apart, and the bill for damages gets sent on to their next of kin.

So if you're going to combat these threats then I guess you're going to need to be able to move around the ship?  And push buttons?  And generally just do space-ship-type things?  Throughout the mission, each player can take 12 actions - these are determined using the Action Cards, and are planned out using each player's Action Track.

Generally it's a good idea to physically represent the players on the board.  Space Alert features 5 colourful crew tokens, which correspond to the colours of the Action Tracks.  Those grey-looking fellows at the back are the ship's combat robots, and can be led around the ship to fight off invaders... at least until they malfunction and start killing the crew.  Swings and roundabouts, eh?

No board game is complete without tokens, it seems, and Space Alert has them in spades.  The various tokens are used to keep track of internal threats as they move throughout the ship, the progress of external threats, and the damage dealt to the ship itself - that's right, the ship takes damage!  So if you don't work hard to keep it up and running, then that mega-laser you were counting on to save your skin at the last minute might not actually work so well.

And there are some assorted jelly cubes.  Okay, we were a little disappointed to discover they weren't actually jelly cubes.  These translucent plastic cubes and cylinders are used for various purposes in the game, but usually for keeping track of the ship's energy, which can be transferred between reactors, and assigned to weapons and shields.

We were thinking of leaving this out of Part 1 of the review, but seeing as this is a box contents article and this was in the box, we feel we should include it, but feel free to ignore it for now.  This overly-complicated-looking track is effectively the ship's black box recording, and all will make sense in Part 2!

At this point you may be thinking "Okay, you're keeping the ship in-tact, things are attacking you, I get that... but how do you know when/where the threats come from?"  This is one of our favourite parts of the game, and one that makes it quite immersive...

The CD!  Now we've played games with CD soundtracks before (most notably Last Night on Earth), and the soundtrack has done little to enhance the gameplay - in fact, if anything, it's detracted from the experience.  With Space Alert, however, things are different.  This is not a CD of cheesy music, but the audio track of the ship's computer.  Once you've selected a track and pressed play, the designated communications officer has to listen closely to know when and where the threats are approaching from, when players are allowed to exchange or draw new Action Cards, or can even cause a communications blackout, wherein players have to continue without communicating until the blackout resolves.

This makes Space Alert a real-time game, as opposed to turn-based, which adds to the chaos and tension of fending off attacks from all sides!  The CD only contains around 10 tracks, not including the training mission, but a free Mission Generator app can be downloaded for smartphones, which randomly generates missions and is a highly recommended addition to the game.

Well, that's quite a lot of content, isn't it?  Come back shortly to see how the gameplay breaks down and find out our final score on the game!  Until then, drink up, and game on!

Zombies Keep Out, Part 2: Gameplay & Verdict

In our last article we headed back to the much-beloved world of zombies, taking a look at the box contents for Privateer Press' new release, Zombies Keep Out - a co-operative game for 1-6 players.  Now it's time to have a good look at the gameplay mechanics, and reward it with its coveted* Games & Tea final score (*Games & Tea final score may not actually be coveted).

In Zombies Keep Out, players take on the roles of the Bodgers - a team of tinkering goblins who find their workshop under siege from an approaching zombie horde.  The players must work together to fend off the zombie horde and cobble together 3 contraptions to stop them, before the zombies overrun the barricades and swarm through the workshop!

The zombies' shambling routes are arranged into nice neat columns (whoever said zombies are messy?), with the zombie pool at the bottom of the board and the workshop along the top.  To begin the game, the bottom two rows are filled with zombies, with one in each space.  There are four different types of zombies - Creepers, Leapers, Brutes and Runners - each of which are colour-coordinated with a certain area of the workshop.  The initial setup zombies are placed to match up with their corresponding locations, so the cellar (far-left) is faced with yellow Creepers, the front doors (centre) with a pair of red Brutes etc.  With the zombies places, the initial barricade tokens are placed on each workshop location, giving the Bodgers' stronghold a decent headstart over the horde.  Then a face-down contraption card is placed next to each workshop location, initial part cards are dealt out to the players, and then you're ready to go!  This is a nice, short setup sequence, meaning that players won't be left waiting for mountains of game components to be sorted and shuffled.

The player most prepared for a real-life zombie outbreak goes first - which in a crowd of zombie fans can lead to some arguing before the game even begins!  Once the argument has been settled (trial by combat is a favoured way of resolving things), the game can finally begin as the zombies get underway!

The first phase of each player's turn is dedicated to the zombies, as the active player draws a Terrible Things card off the top of the deck.  The Terrible Things cards throw new ever-changing challenges the players' way, ranging from minor annoyances to flat out disasters!  Terrible Things include adding to the number of active zombies on the board (as in the example above), moving zombies, backtracking on an in-progress blueprint, discarding all-important parts cards, or getting bitten (which is one of our favourite mechanics, and will be mentioned in more detail later!).

Each Terrible Things card contains three options, and the player must choose one of these actions to go ahead with.  Once the action is chosen, the player discards the card face-down and carries it out.  The rejected options are never revealed to the other players, which is a nice minor rule to keep players from second-guessing eachother.  The chosen action must be possible however, so a player wouldn't be able to choose a "All zombies in the rear row shamble forward" option if there were no zombies in the rear row.  In the event of none of the options being possible, then all zombies on the board advance!

Whilst there are four different zombie types, Privateer Press have kept things simple in terms of movement, and each zombie only moves one space when prompted.  The zombies always follow the path of the appropriately-coloured arrow, so the grey Runners always shamble straight forward, whilst the Creepers, Leapers and Brutes do their utmost to head towards the matching area of the workshop.  Now moving one space at a time may seem quite harmless and manageable, but once the zombie numbers begin to rise, chaos can ensue!

Each space can only contain a maximum of 3 zombies, so if there are ever any more than that, the active player must shamble some of them further on until only 3 remain.  Of course, this can have a knock-on effect of causing further spaces to exceed their zombie limit, and further shambling is called for!  In worst case scenarios, a simple shamble can cause a butterfly effect which brings the whole workshop crashing down!

"Avon calling..."

If a zombie needs to shamble whilst in the final space of a column, they deal damage to the barricade and are returned to the zombie pool, and this is where strategic zombie-placement comes into effect.  The grey Runners only ever deal 1 point of damage to their target, but if any of the other zombie types ever hit a section of the workshop which matches their colour, it deals 2 damage instead.  If an area of the workshop ever loses its final barricade token, it's considered to be overrun, and the contraption behind it is removed from play, and any further damage which would be dealt to that section is instead dealt to the next section across in the direction of the central doors.  If the doors are ever breached, or three of the contraptions are destroyed, the zombies have overwhelmed the workshop and the players lose.

Once the Terrible Things card has been resolved, the player then takes their action for the turn.

We'd just like to pause at this point to make a small note about the turn sequence.  We think it's a bloomin' good sequence!  Most zombie games involve the player taking their turn first, and then the zombies activating afterwards.  By reversing the process in Zombies Keep Out, players are given the chance the react to the unfolding events, rather than being left on the sidelines for a round until the turn passes back to themselves.  It may only seem like a little thing, but it makes a lot of difference to the way the game feels.

Anyway, moving swiftly on to the players' actions.  During each turn the player may only take one action out of five possible choices.  Three of those options revolve around the part cards, so this seems as good a time as any to take a closer look at them.

There are three sections to each parts card, relating to the three possible actions for which they can be discarded in exchange.  To use the card to Defend, the player selects one space on the board and can remove a zombie of the specified colour, returning it to the pool.  The card above is a versatile one, allowing the player to kill any of the zombie types.  Some are more limited in their zombie-killing options, whereas others may restrict players to one zombie type, but allow them to kill two of that zombie instead.

To carry out a Repair action, the player can add a number of barricade tokens equal to the number shown to any location in the workshop, as long as they don't exceed the starting number of barricades.

To Tinker, the symbol on the parts card must match the next symbol along on the blueprint track of any contraption card.  If it matches, the progress counter can be moved one space along the track.

Once the progress counter reaches the final space on the blueprint track, the contraption is complete, and it can be put to use on subsequent player turns.  The one and only win condition for the game is to complete three of these contraptions, so good hand-management is key to victory.

Which brings us to Push The Button actions.  When a contraption is complete, a player can take a Push The Button action to activate the contraption during their turn.  Contraptions have a range of effects, from allowing players to draw extra cards, to allowing them to destroy zombies without having to discard.  Completing a contraption at the right time can turn the tide of battle!

And then the final action is simply to Scrounge, which allows players to draw two extra parts cards.

In addition to their action, players may also trade cards with eachother, ensuring that the correct parts come up when needed.

Once the player has taken their chosen action, play moves onto the next player, and another Terrible Things card starts the ball rolling again.

So that just leaves biting!  The bite rules were one of our favourite things about Zombies Keep Out, so we'll go into them in a little more depth here.  The only way players can get bitten is as the result of a Terrible Things card, and upon getting bitten they receive a bite token.  If at any point every player has at least 2 bite tokens, the game is over and the zombies have won (but seeing as the players are turning into zombies anyway, it's a win-win situation really).  The number of bite tokens a player has reduces their action options, but the rules about behaviour are the most fun!

After one bite, players can no longer trade cards, and must slur their speech for the rest of the game.

After two bites, they can no longer tinker either (picture a mindless player who can only bash things and nail up planks of wood!), and their speech must become barely intelligible.

After three bites, they can no longer use speech at all, and can only communicate through grunts and hand-gestures (imagine the fun of trying to teach the game to new players at this point!).  Also the player has to choose their Terrible Things option before even looking at the card, by grunting and holding up the appropriate number of fingers before drawing it.

And after four (or more) bites, the player has fully turned into a zombie!  They can only communicate through zombie noises, and instead of taking an action in the second phase of the turn, they draw a second Terrible Things card instead!

And that's the basics of Zombies Keep Out.  It's not the most complicated game by any means, but is a nice casual take on the zombie board game genre.  The quick setup time and small board mean that it's an easy game to get out, play through, and put away again, making it a nice way to break up a long gaming session.  It's also quick to learn, and within a few minutes of our first session everyone confidently knew what they were doing.  Being a casual game, it does create a very good atmosphere with like-minded friends, but this is where the issues with Zombies Keep Out start to arise.

It's a good social game, and the bite rules are fun for those who have been bitten and entertaining for those who are watching, but the flipside of this is that the overall experience begins to diminish as player numbers decrease.  When you're only playing with 2 players, for example, and one player gets bitten, it becomes less fun for the healthy player as they no longer have a coherent teammate to communicate with.

The solo game suffers from the same setback, as you're left trying to play a social game without the social element.  There are many cooperative games on the market which can be played solo - some, such as Firefly, work incredibly well, and some, such as Arkham Horror, are a masterclass in futility as the game mechanics fail to translate to a single player.  In both of these cases however, you're still left feeling immeresed in the game, whether scraping together a living as a planet-hopping transport captain, or struggling against an unstoppable tide of eldritch horrors.  With a solo game of Zombies Keep Out, you aren't left feeling like you're boldly taking on the army of the undead single-handedly, but instead feel more like you're playing a game of solitare - simply hoping you draw the right cards from the parts deck for the blueprints in front of you.

Solo will not be needed for this game...

And finally we should touch on the replayability, of which there isn't a great deal.  It's certainly a fun little casual game, but there isn't much going on to make one playthrough different to another.  Sure, you don't know what the next Terrible Things card might yield, but when they all serve roughly the same purpose - and the entire deck is cycled through once per game anyway - repetitition creeps in fairly quickly.

So is this the zombie game we've been dreaming of to keep our undead fandom satisfied?  Alas, no.  But at the very least it's a nice little casual game which will tide us over until the next contender steps into the ring.

The Good Points

• Zombies Keep Out is quick to set up and easy to learn.
• Up to 6 people can play at once, so it can accomodate a decent-sized gaming group.
• The bite rules lift the game up a notch, so as long as the group is willing to play along it creates a very fun atmosphere.
• The box and board are relatively small, making it an easy game to transport and play.

The Bad Points

• There's not a great deal to mix things up between playthroughs, and replayabilty suffers as a result.
• Being a social game, a lot of the atmosphere is lost with fewer player numbers, and solo mode verges on becoming a drag.
• Some variety in the zombie miniatures would have been nice.

Recommended Number of Players: 4+

Zombies Keep Out is a textbook "the more, the merrier" game.  The atmosphere doesn't hold up well with 2 players, and whilst 3 is a step in the right direction it's still not great.  6 players works very well, but anything above/including 4 should make for a decent session.

Average Game Time: 45 minutes (30 minutues solo)

For a casual game, Zombies Keep Out has quite a decent play time.  At 45 minutes, you're unlikely to be playing it more than once in a single gaming session, which is actually a good thing as it extends the game's otherwise meagre lifespan

Replay Value: Low

Whilst it's fun laughing at the grunts and frustrated hand gestures of your infected teammates, this isn't enough to hold up Zombies Keep Out by itself.  It's a nice little game for the first couple of playthroughs, but following on from that it becomes stale and repetitive, with nothing really to keep it refreshed.

The Future: Shambling

Zombies Keep Out is a new release, so the future is quite open at the moment.  The first expansion is already on the horizon in the form of Night of the Noxious Dead, but to be honest it doesn't look like it'll be enough to breath life into the core game.  The expansion features a new zombie type, new contraptions, new Terrible Things and new parts, but on the whole it looks like it's going to be more of the same, which isn't going to help an already samey game.

Price: £25

Zombies Keep Out will set you back around the £25 mark.  This is a decent price for a board game, but has to be weighed up against how much replayability you'll be getting out of it.  Being a new release from a big name in the miniatures world, it should be fairly easy to track down at your local gaming store if you fancy taking a chance on it.

OVERALL SCORE: 7/10

Tea consumed during this review: Typhoo, milk and 2 sweeteners. Brew rating: 7.5/10

If you enjoyed this article and want to see more of the same, come and like us on our Facebook page to keep up to date with our reviews, as well as our general day-to-day ramblings!

Zombies Keep Out, Part 1: Box Contents

We've mentioned (more than once) in the past that zombies hold a special place in our hearts here at Games & Tea, and as such there is no shortage of zombie games in our collection!  With zombies as popular as ever though, it seems that a new zombie game is getting released every other week, and it can sometimes be hard to separate the quality from the chaff.  So far we've taken a look at Zombie Fluxx, which we thoroughly enjoyed (although Fluxx isn't everyone's cup of tea), Zombies!!!, which we found clunky and very repetitive, and the yet-to-be-reviewed Zombicide, which seemed to be using a lot of fancy components to hide a lack of depth.  Now Privateer Press have thrown their hat into the zombie ring with the latest game in their Bodgers series: Zombies Keep Out, a cooperative board game for 1-6 players.

 

 

Privateer Press are perhaps best known for their Warmachine/Hordes tabletop systems, but are no strangers to the world of board/card games.  The light-hearted Bodgers series always centre around a team of goblins, and the different games all have separate themes, with the theme of Zombies Keep Out obviously being the undead.  It's not a game that takes itself seriously, as evidenced by the box art, so if you're looking a gritty, immersive survival horror game then you're probably best leaving now.

The players take on the role of the Bodgers, who have barricaded themselves in their workshop in reaction to a zombie outbreak.  As the zombies advance on the workshop and attempt to tear down the barricades, the Bodgers must rely on their resourcefulness and mechanical skill to construct 3 devices to fend the undead horde off.  Part 2 of the review will go into how this works in detail, so for now let's take a look at what you'll find inside the Zombies Keep Out box.

 

 

The Zombies Keep Out box is very nice and compact, and in fact is the smallest box for a board game in our substantial collection.  As a result, the board itself is also quite small, requiring only a small amount of set-up space to play.  The board shows the front yard outside the Bodgers' workshop, with the numbered circles representing the path of the zombies as they shamble towards their intended lunch.  The swimming pool at the bottom of the board is the waiting area for the zombies (cleverly referred to as the zombie pool in the rulebook), and the five areas of the workshop are represented along the top row; the cellar, the front door, the balcony, and two windows.

 

 

Of course a zombie game wouldn't be complete without zombies, and there are four types in Zombies Keep Out; Brutes, Runners, Leapers and Creepers.  If you notice on the game board, the front door, balcony and cellar are all colour coded, so the Brutes, Leapers and Creepers all shamble in the direction of their preferred targets.  The grey Runners are a little more mindless and just shamble forward in a straight line.  The little zombie miniatures are of a nice quality, but we have to confess to being slightly disappointed that the same sculpt was used for all of the zombies.  Even if there were only two or three different designs it would have been nice to add a little variety, but as it stands, all 45 zombies are identical.

 

 

In order to fight off the zombies, the Bodgers need to build some suitably ramshackle contraptions.  Zombies Keep Out features 15 contraption cards, with a blueprint of the device on one side and its abilities on the other.

 

 

In order to build these contraptions, the Bodgers are going to need parts, and this (appropriately) is where the part cards come into play.  As players are only allowed to take one action each turn (more details in Part 2), these cards serve multiple purposes.  They can be used to advance the blueprint track of a contraption as long as the part matches next requirement on the blueprint, they can be used to repair barricades if the zombies have weakened one part of the workshop, or they can be used to kill zombies in one location on the board, buying the rest of the team some precious time!

 

 

A zombie apocalypse is generally considered to be an unfavourable affair, as represented by the Terrible Things cards - the final card type in Zombies Keep Out.  At the start of each player's turn they must draw a card off the Terrible Things deck, resolve one of the events on the card, and then discard it face-down.  The Terrible Things options always advance the zombies' cause, by either causing them to shamble forward, adding more zombies to the board, biting players, or moving the blueprint track on a device backwards.  One of the nice mechanics in the game is that the players don't have to tell anyone about the two options they didn't choose - as the rulebook puts it, you have enough to deal with without the other players second-guessing your every move!

 

 

This just leaved the tokens, which are present in Zombies Keep Out in mercifully small numbers!  Progress tokens (left) are used to keep track of how close the players are to completing one of their contraptions.  Bite tokens (centre) are used to track how many times each player has been bitten by a zombie (which can have hilarious consequences), and barricade tokens are used to represent just how well the fortifications are holding up in each section of the workshop.

 

And that's the entire box contents of Zombies Keep Out!  Or at least the entire box content relevant to the game itself.  It also contains a handful of cards which can be used to add a zombie edge to some of the other Bodgers games, but as we're looking at Zombies Keep Out as a standalone product, we won't be looking at these.

But before we sign off on the box contents and move onto the gameplay, we're just going to take a quick look at the inside of the box, to see how well these components are stored...

 

 

Well it's certainly not the worst box we've ever seen (that accolade still sits firmly with BioShock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia), but it's not great.  The cards are just the right size to fit sideways into the box insert, so if you're careful about which way up you stand the box to store/transport it you should be able to avoid having them scatter all over the place.  The tokens and zombie miniatures, however, are free to rattle around to their hearts' content.  This can easily be addressed by the simple addition of a pair of resealable polythene bags, but it would have been nice if Privateer Press had included these as standard in the box.

 

So that's it for Part 1!  Come back for Part 2 where we'll be looking at the gameplay mechanics and revealing whether Zombies Keep Out has won a place in our cold, dead hearts...

Arkham Horror, A Call of Cthulhu Board Game, Part 2: Gameplay & Verdict

A few days ago we made a start on our first Fantasy Flight big box review, taking a look at the box contents of one of their flagship games: Arkham Horror.  Now that we've given you lovely folk some time to let your Christmas indulgences work their way out of your collective systems, we're going to push on with our gameplay analysis and see just how well that plethora of gaming pieces mesh together into a tabletop experience.
 

Arkham Horror is a fully co-operative game, in which 1-8 players must work together to investigate the strange occurrences throughout the titular city of Arkham, and prevent the incursion of an Ancient One (colossal monster, to you and me) into our world.  As we demonstrated in Part 1 of our review, this game does feature a lot of components, and so the initial setup process takes up a fair amount of time and space.

Once the gargantuan game board has been laid out and the starting tokens and cards have been placed in their appropriate locations, it's time for the players to receive their investigator alter-egos with which they must tread these dark and dangerous streets.  This can be done by either randomly dealing out the character cards or by each player choosing their character from the set.  We personally prefer adding a semi-random element to the process, by dealing out two investigators to each player and then allowing them to choose which of the two to keep.  There are 16 investigators to choose from, so even in full 8 player games this still allows for a bit of variation from one playthrough to the next.

Whilst the various attributes of each investigator can be adjusted from one turn to the next (there'll be more on that later), each character in Arkham Horror does excel in certain areas.  In larger games this means that a team can be assembled to deal with almost anything the other worldly horrors can throw their way, whereas in smaller games it leaves players having to vastly tailor their strategies to accommodate their investigators' strengths.  Some characters are combat heavy, and can play a blunt force game, thundering their way across the board leaving a trail of dead monsters in their wake.  Some are good at evading trouble, and can sneak untouched across the city, preventing the Ancient One's incursion before it even knew it faced opposition!  Some are good supporting characters, keeping their fellow investigators both healthy and sane as they battle the forces of darkness.  And some are simply good all-rounders, excelling at nothing but having no overall weak spots.  If playing a solo game we'd thoroughly recommend hand-picking an investigator, as drawing a support character with no other characters to support is a fairly fast path to a devastating defeat.

Each investigator also starts the game with an inventory, containing some set items and some randomly assigned.  For example one character may start with the Tommy Gun, in which case it will need to be sorted from the Common Items deck, whereas one may start with two random Unique Items, which will simply be dealt off the top of the appropriate deck.

The only remaining element of Arkham Horror is the Ancient One itself.  With 8 to choose from these can also be either hand-picked or selected at random.  Seeing as each Ancient One presents different challenges throughout the course of the game, we've always preferred to hand-pick ours, allowing us to effectively set a difficulty level dependant upon how much of a challenge we want.

Vote Cthulhu for a quick and painful death!

With the Ancient One and investigators all selected it's time for the horror to begin!

Each turn of the game consists of 5 phases; Upkeep, Movement, Arkham Encounters, Other World Encounters, and Mythos.  The Upkeep phase allows players to refresh exhausted spells and items and, more importantly, to shuffle their investigator's stats around.

The bottom half of each investigator's character card is devoted to that investigator's attributes - there are some skills and items which can increase these, but the numbers on the card are that investigator's base value.  Each skill track is marked by one of the 0-shaped tokens, and these keep track of each stat's current value.  The character's Focus is shown above the skill tracks, and this dictated how far a player may adjust their skills during the Upkeep phase.  The character above, for example, has a Focus of 1, so one of his skill tracks can be moved one space left or right.  As you can see, skills are paired, meaning that as one stat is increased another is reduced, which means that players must plan their move ahead and decide just how they want their investigator to behave in the coming turn.  You may want your investigator to be fast on their feet, but the downside to this is that they're unlikely to sneak past any monsters with the amount of noise they're making!

The values on the skill tracks are used to attempt various skill tests as and when the game presents them to the investigators, and they follow a nice and simple mechanic which is easy to remember.  The skill value is the number of dice the investigator has to roll, and any dice which land on a 5 or 6 are counted as a success.  For example, the character above has to pass a Luck check.  His Luck value is 3, so he rolls 3 dice, and if any one of them lands on a 5 or 6 then the check is passed - it really is that simple!  Some checks will have modifiers, such as "Pass a WILL(-1) check", but they always work on the basis that 1-4 is a failure and 5-6 is a success.  This is a very good way of working skill checks, as it requires no memorising of complex stat tables - all that players need to do is read their investigator's stat line and roll that many dice.

After Upkeep comes Movement, and this is where players have to choose between fight or flight.  Any time an investigator ends their movement on a space with a monster or attempts to leave that space, they have to attempt to either evade or fight the creature.  Evading is usually the easier of the two options, but leaves the monster on the board to continue prowling, and once the number of monsters reaches critical levels all hell starts to break loose (literally!).  On the other hand, jumping recklessly into a fight can often end badly, sending the investigator to the hospital and causing them to lose much of their valuable inventory.

This adds further to the forward planning aspect of Arkham Horror, as players must toe the line between taking a full-on fight to these other-worldly terrors, and tip-toeing around the city in the hope of not being spotted.  In large multi player games it can often be worth loading one player up with weapons and sending them on the rampage whilst the others attempt to secure the win for the team!

The way to win at Arkham Horror is to seal the transdimensional Gates which are cropping up across the city, and to do this players need Clue tokens (as shown above).  Once players have gathered enough of these they can head through a Gate and attempt to close it.

Depending on whether they are in Arkham or one of the Other Worlds, the players then have an encounter, which is determined by the appropriate deck of cards.  Some of these will require skill checks to prevent the loss of health or sanity, some simply involve a monster appearing which the investigator must then deal with, and some will reward investigators with Clues, items or allies.  One criticism of the Arkham Horror base game is that there aren't a great deal of cards for encounters within the city of Arkham itself, so in larger games players will see the same cards coming out on more than one occasion.

Following the two Encounter phases, the turn ends with the Mythos phase.  The Mythos phase determines the location of the next Gate, the movement of monsters already on the board, the appearance of new Clues, and events which will either be instantaneous or long-standing.

The opening of a new Gate has two effects on the game; first of all it spawns a new monster into the city, and second of all it brings the Ancient One one step closer to its awakening...

Each Ancient One in Arkham Horror has a Doom Track along the bottom of the card.  Each time a Gate opens inside of Arkham, a Doom Token is placed on the next available number on the track - if the final number is ever covered up then the Ancient One awakens, and the board is abandoned as the investigators dedicate themselves to the singular task of defeating this abomination.  If they succeed then they win the game and can give themselves a firm pat on the back, but when the Ancient One does come out then the odds of success are extremely long!

The turns continue as such with the first player being passed around the board; players move, collect Clues, have encounters, and then allow the horrors to take their turn in the Mythos phase.  The game only ends when the final Gate is closed, or the Ancient One is defeated in combat.

All in all our impressions on Arkham Horror have been mixed.  To prevent this review from turning into an epic of Tolkien proportions we've stripped down the gameplay to its very basics, but we have to emphasise that this is the most complex board game we've ever played.  Most of the games we've learnt in the past generally involve one tutorial playthrough with the rulebook open, and then subsequent playthroughs usually run pretty smoothly with minimal rules consultation.  With Arkham Horror it took roughly 2 months of regular games to fully get to grips with the complicated ruleset, and this degree of commitment to a single game may put off a lot of potential players.  That said, once we'd got our heads around it we did find it very enjoyable, and it's nice to have something that we can throw ourselves into for a whole afternoon.

The second issue is that of space.  With so many components, Arkham Horror does need a lot of space to set up and play, and gamers who don't have a great deal of space at home may struggle to play.

This is a 4 player game set up and ready to go, to give an idea of the amount of playing space needed!

The final issue we had was that Arkham Horror is not a well-balanced game. At all.  The ease of the game is directly related to the number of players involved in our experience, with 1-player games verging on being impossible, 2-players being extremely difficult, and 3/4-player games presenting a decent balance.  We've yet to try out games with higher player numbers than this, but it does point to a trend of more players meaning easier games.

Negative points aside, we have enjoyed our experience on the streets of Arkham.  There are enough variables to keep the game from going stale (aside from the previously mentioned issue with  the Arkham Encounter cards), and it's an extremely intricate and involving game.  It's also a big box game which doesn't break the bank, which makes a refreshing change.

So let's break it down and see what the final verdict is...

The Good Points

• Arkham Horror is a very involving game, allowing players to lose themselves in a single campaign against the other worldly monsters for an entire evening.
• It's a beautifully presented game, with nice quality artwork throughout.
• The skill checks work off a nice simple D6 system, preventing the need for complicated skill tables.
• As a game for 1-8 players, this is something that can be played by a gaming group of pretty much any size, and can also be practiced alone to help gain a better understanding of the rules.
• With 16 investigators and 8 Ancient Ones, there are enough variables to prevent playthroughs from becoming too similar.

The Bad Points

• Arkham Horror is very complicated, and so it will take a long time and a lot of commitment for players to have a firm grip on the rules.
• It takes up a lot of space, so players living in small apartments may not have room to set up and play the game.
• The game could do with more Arkham Encounter cards, as these will be quickly re-used in larger games.
• It's very poorly balanced, with the ease of the game increasing with the number of the players.

Recommended Number of Players: 3-4

Whilst Arkham Horror is advertised as being for 1-8 players, 1-player mode is really a waste of the players' time, as they'll be unable to keep on top of the Gate openings before the Ancient One awakens.  The flipside of this is that with lots of players on the board it's easier to run around and keep on top of things from one turn to the next.  In our experience 3-4 players presents the best balance, forcing players to keep their wits about them without becoming too difficult.

Average Game Time: 3 hours

That's right, we weren't kidding when we said that Arkham Horror would take over your evening.  With such a complex ruleset and deeply involved game turns, a playthrough of Arkham Horror clocks in at roughly the 3 hour mark.

Replay Value: Medium

Arkham Horror does have a lot of variable elements, with the stack of Other World Encounter and Mythos cards, and the selection of investigators and Ancient Ones.  This helps to give a random element to the game which can prevent it from being too samey from one playthrough to the next.  However, the Arkham Encounter cards will be exhausted very quickly, and the extreme length of the game may put some people off coming back for more.

The Future: Bright (if Cthulhu doesn't devour you)

Arkham Horror is one of Fantasy Flight's flagship games, and as such has been blessed with a wealth of expansions.  These add extra sections onto the game board, new investigators, new mechanics, new items, new encounter cards... basically everything needed to refresh the base game.  There are currently 8 expansions to choose from, but it's a safe bet that Fantasy Flight aren't done with the franchise just yet.

Price: £35

For a big box game, Arkham Horror carries a refreshingly small price tag.  Most games of this size will set you back around the £50 mark, but Arkham Horror comes in at roughly £35.  As one of Fantasy Flight's biggest games it's widely available, with a lot of FLGS carrying it on their shelves as standard fare.  For those that don't, however, it should be very easy to order in.

OVERALL SCORE: 7.5/10

Tea consumed during this review: PG tips with milk and 2 sweeteners... it went cold before drinking.  Brew rating 5/10

If you enjoyed this article and want to see more of the same, come and like us on our Facebook page to keep up to date with our reviews, as well as our general day-to-day ramblings!