This week Anthony and I played a board game which both of us have acquired in the last couple of months... Alien: Fate of the Nostromo. I'd bought a copy off eBay a while ago but it has been sat in the 'to play' pile so when Anthony mentioned he had it as well I knew it wouldn't be long before it appeared on the table.
As you'd expect it's a nicely produced game with miniatures for each of the key crew members and one of the Alien itself. The map features rooms and corridors on the Nostromo split over 2 levels.
The game is cooperative. Players are allocated 3 random missions that they have to complete before the final mission is revealed. Each turn random event cards move the Alien or pesky Science Officer Ash who is doing his best to thwart the crew's actions, usually by confiscating the scrap material you'll need to build things like cattle prods, flame throwers etc. and generally getting in the way. Some of the cards are incident free and Jones the cat makes the occasional appearance. As the game progresses the more benign cards are removed, meaning the tension ramps up as things build to a climax.
In our case the final mission involved having each player in specific locations and having to manoeuvre the Alien into the airlock. Of course the Alien is doing it's best to attack the crew... if it does, no-one actually dies. Instead the player has to flee and the morale tracker counts down. In our game we'd got 3/4 of the way through the morale track before successfully blowing the creature out of an airlock.
It's a fairly simple and quick game but nicely challenging and replayable. And the board also features a lovely picture of Jones... what more could you want!
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