When my friend Wig showed me a new cooperative game, I was skeptical. When I learned it came with a soundtrack CD that was vital to the game play, I thought for sure it would suck. I was very, very wrong.
My friends and I spent the better part of a day playing Space Alert and it was probably the most fun I've had in the last six months (at least, the most boardgame fun... don't want to slight my wife).
Game play is cooperative and each player controls a single "character". Once the CD starts playing, it acts as a timer for 12 rounds of actions. The catch is, the actions are ALL planned out ahead of time while the CD is playing. Oh, and sometimes there's static on the CD and you can't talk to the other players. After the CD track ends everyone's actions for the 12 rounds are set in stone and the resolution starts - that's where you learn if you really coordinated your actions with the other players as well as you thought you did.
Imagine that you plan to fire the main gun on round five... and you talked to another player to make sure that he draws power to the main gun on round four so that you will have energy availabe to shoot... but when you get to the resolution phase you discover that another player already used all the power in that reactor during round three... so there's no power to draw to the main gun in round four and there you are in round five, your character pushing the "fire" button to no avail as the main gun is without power.
This game requires the players to cooperate and function as a team on a level I've never seen before in any boardgame. There are other "cooperative" games out there but if you like a real challenge check out Space Alert. Heck, I could see this game being used by companies to teach teamwork to employees... it's that good.
Physical Quality: 7 of 10
Balanced Play: 10 of 10
Easy to Learn: 8 of 10
Repeat Playability: 7 of 10
Overall: 32 of 40
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Topic: Space Alert (Read 126 times)