F&%# Space Alert!

Space Alert!

Premise of Space Alert is that the players' ship has just warped into a distant and dangerous part of the galaxy. It will take 10 minutes for the ships computer to map the area before they can warp back home. The crew must protect the ship during the interim. The goal for the crew is to keep the ship functioning so they can get home safe.

The crew works as a team. There is no traitor, it's purely cooperative. The game is played in two phases: an Action Phase, and a Resolution Phase.

The Action Phase is played in real time representing that 10 minutes that the crew spends in the remote part of the Galaxy. There is a 10 minute track on a CD to act as time keeper (it has several different variations in fact to preserve some replayability). Periodically the CD will announce a new threat has arrived (type and location/direction) and the players will flip up a card to reveal the specifics of the threat and attempt to deal with it in whatever time they have left. Each players can play 12 actions during the 10 minute Action Phase and they do so by playing cards from their hand face down on a board in front of them. The actions are not resolved at this time, they are resolved during the resolution phase. Players must try to coordinate moving around the ship, firing off the lasers at external enemies, and moving power to different sections of the ship to power those lasers (and shields, but really, who needs shields).

After the CD announces mission complete, the players can take a deep breath, put there head in their hands and quietly weep to themselves.

In Resolution Phase, each players actions are revealed and resolved one at a time, starting with the captain and going in clockwise order. There are very limited mechanics that allow a player to change his action during the Resolution Phase when it's determined there's been a mistake where someone did not do what they intended. But on the whole, this is where the game hands you your arse.

At first glance, it seems pretty straight forward. Play out your cards, double check everything, maybe do a couple of dry runs. But actually, 10 minutes goes by really fast. No really. It's fast.

But that 10 minutes of chaos is really the whole game. You just spend the resolution phase seeing if it worked. Whole game takes less than 30 minutes.

Obviously a key here is you must communicating effectively. It's like a job or something. Everyone can't micro manage the whole ship. There's too much information out there and too many different types of threats. The best you can do is figure out is who depends on your actions and whose actions depend on you. For example, if you're powering the starboard side (that's the red side), then you need to make sure a) there is power available from the main reactor when you try to bring it over to your side and b) there is power available on the red side when someone tries to fire the lasers. When you figure out who you are working with, you coordinate with them as best you can. Then of course it would be nice is there was someone has to make sure all the threats are being handle. Like a captain or something.

Once the rules are clear the game seems pretty straight forward (and by the way, it's way way way easier to be taught this game than to learn it from the rules). We're still noobs and adding rules as instructed, but all games seem to be winnable. It's just a matter of whether or not you made a catastrophic mistake or not...and as a random element is added, how well the team accounted for unexpected issues.

During the action phase you can do just about anything in the name of coordination and planning short of showing your cards. All we did was move our figures around the board so the rest of the team could see where we were working, which allowed them to coordinate with us. But certainly you can do more.

During the resolution phase of our final game I noticed a couple of things. First, I had no idea what I planned in the first couple of actions (out of the twelve). "Did I do that right? I hope I did that right!" It seemed like I played those cards an eternity ago. However, it all worked out ok. Second, there were threats that I was not involved in handling, and they were cared for just fine. Not all players have to be aware of everything that's happening on the ship.

As I said, everything seemed winnable. In many coop games you can play a game where the way the challenge mechanic unfolds, you find the game is not winnable. So really your just playing the game for the sweet spot, where the challenge was not a gimme, or the challenge was not impossible. Space Alert does not appear to be that way. I may not feel this way once we insert all the different threats :)

The threats thrown out against you all follow the general pattern, but they each have a wrinkle that impacts how you must react most efficiently. The group has to read and re-read the cards. Read read read. You don't want to find your plans go horribly wrong because the ship you shot at three times doesn't take damage until it gets in close to the ship.

The most challenging part of the game seems to be managing the power. Most of the time we just generated more and more power and prayed it was done effectively. The player managing the main reactor has the toughest job because he needs to coordinate with the most people.

The last couple of actions don't seem to matter as much. You've either managed the threats by now or not. It's too late to move to another part of the ship and try to help out there. Moving seems incredibly inefficient.

I really enjoyed it, the pace was crazy and made for mistakes which while annoying, are still fun. We are playing with just a quarter of the threats. The harder threats are yet to come. There seems to be quite a bit of replay-ability left in this game...which is good because the game is short, easily completing in less than 30 minutes. Results are still early, but so far this is the very best straight coop game I have played (one with no traitor). The game allows you all the slack you need to resolve the complicated knot placed in front of you, it just doesn't give you more than 10 minutes to do it. Clever.

I'll give it a 9/10, but acknowledge that there are a lot of votes left to be counted.