Can be played as a single player game, or with up to 4 friends, dividing roles accordingly. If you don’t have a full group of 5 players, then the missing characters are androids, which can be controlled by any player.
Space Alert effectively evades the popular quarterbacking issue of cooperative board games. There’s simply no way to communicate enough useful information to other players in the 10-minute timeframe, so nobody can control absolutely everything. Everyone must efficiently work together and say what they’ll be doing to take care of the looming threats.
The components of the game should hold up to multiple plays and regular wear and tear. There are a lot of good quality wooden tokens, and the cards are made of durable cardstock. The gameboard and the tracking boards are also quite thick and should endure well.
The very basics of the game are quite simple. Every player has a role assigned to them – the captain, the communications officer, and the security officer. The players take 12 turns in 10 minutes pre-planning actions while listening to a soundtrack that explains all incoming threats. The action phase is divided into three further parts, each of which has a separate deck of action cards. The soundtrack calls out the threats, the endings of phases, data transfers, and communication disruptions, and you must act accordingly.
After the 10-minute soundtrack is over, all the actions the players planned and coordinated are resolved. If the ship is still alive after that, then the game is won.
Space Alert has a lot of pieces to sort through, cards and decks to shuffle and place on the gameboard. It’s not so bad if you decide to play more than one game, but the actual games are very quick in comparison to the amount of setup/takedown time.
Once you press “play” on the 10-minute soundtrack, there’s no interrupting it – no pauses, no rewinds, etc. It’s important to stay focused, not engage in casual banter, and make sure there are no distractions in the background, which can be difficult to manage sometimes.
Every action you take highly impacts what happens to the rest of the crew, and one tiny misstep can make the whole plan fall apart, which can be frustrating to some. Teamwork and good communication is completely necessary to win.
Space Alert is not very beginner friendly, and if you don’t properly understand how the game works when you start it up, then you’ll have visible difficulty keeping up with what’s happening in the frantic 10-minute action phase. You’ll also be dragging down the other players because there really isn’t enough time to explain rules when the game is already in progress.
It’s worth reserving an hour to play through the well-designed tutorial book that slowly introduces the complex aspects, so you’ll be ready for the real deal.
A few of the rules show this game doesn't take itself too seriously, which is generally a nice relief when playing with those who take their gaming very seriously.
Wiggle the mouse to prevent the screensaver from locking up the whole ship.
Look out of the window for bonus points; you can't always trust your dashboard.
Cooperative games are more social than most, as rather than focusing solely on your next move, you need to talk to other players in order to determine what's going on.
This is also a good way to learn to listen to those around you, since it's important that your actions fit in with those of your team-mates; a bit like coding.
It may be a stereotype, but that doesn't make it untrue; most programmers enjoy sci-fi, so this theme should appeal to the demographic. The game executes it perfectly. From the aesthetic look of the game to the actions you take, there’s plenty of science fiction – aliens, spaceships, robots, etc. The soundtrack playing in the background during the planning phase also adds a lot to the immersion.
The combination of several CD tracks along with variant card combos and action options ensures that no two games will be the same, making the game widely replayable. If you run out of the official CD tracks, then you can also download the Space Alert Mission Generator to get some random scenarios, or you can browse the internet for custom missions.
Various options can be selected to alter the difficulty level of the game, such as the power of internal and external common threats and serious threats. This makes, for example, the monsters you encounter much stronger, adding a whole new level of required teamwork.
At certain points in the game communications are halted due to static on the radio. This is an excellent opportunity to dry run your steps / unit test your play. It's also a good opportunity for a shot, should you determine to turn this into a drinking game.
Juggling your resources, money, and production against your opponent's actions as you try to satisfy the win conditions (getting the oxygen, temperature, and ocean coverage to their desired levels) can be pretty intense. Always having to think several turns ahead will definitely appeal to people who like a game that makes them strategize and prioritize. Choosing which cards to buy each round, what to spend your resources on, and how to terraform the planet without giving too much leeway to your opponents creates plenty of situations to outplay others.
The sheer amount of things that need to be tracked is fairly high, and continually grows in complexity as the game goes on. Keeping track of cards in play, actions, awards, milestones, map, resources, money, etc. can lead to some intense calculations. Most players will want to carefully ponder their strategy each turn, and the end result is a game that often seems like it comes to a grinding halt.
There is no fixed number of players, so Settlers is flexible to many different groups of friends.
People can even work together in teams. Unlike chess, this is a game that promotes casual conversation
during gameplay, and generally a fun atmosphere, even when people are trying their best to win.
Allows you to develop a strategy and think ahead as well as forcing you to pay attention to what everyone else is doing.
"Through the complex, artful dance of algorithms and probabilities lurking at its core, Settlers manages to be effortlessly fun, intuitively enjoyable, and still intellectually rewarding, a potent combination that's changing the American idea of what a board game can be."
There are expansions for Settlers of Catan such as Explores & Pirates or Cities & Knights. Each one expands on the base game and also has another expansion of the same name that adds support for 5 to 6 players.
Users have to strategize how much time they can spend on balancing their ships to how much time spent looking at the upcoming rounds cards. This makes for fast paced decision making.
The game is broken up into three phases with the first being the most exciting. This makes for unbalanced gameplay in that the other two sections feel a bit dull.
By allowing the player to choose checkpoint and boards before a game the length is easily set. So for those looking for something either short or long the choice is there.
Boardgames are a social thing that many play with their families, the downside being if the children in the family are young this game may not be the best choice. The recommended age is 12+.
On their turn players use their deck of cards to program their next two actions, then they activate the first of those actions and execute the ability from the card before moving their token along the time track based on the card they played. After the time marker has c aught up to them they resolve the next action they programmed, if they are lucky, their plans go off without a hitch and they cheer loudly as they yank a rug out from under another player. Or all the other players have moved and the other players jeer as their plan is rendered ineffective.
The main board for the game features 2 sides, a tavern on one side and two parallel pirate ships on the other, and on both sides the players decide how to place all of the components on the board so no to games are alike and each brawl presents a new challenge as players all struggle to best use the furniture to their advantage.