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Tutaj można dyskutować o konkretnych grach planszowych i karcianych. Każda gra ma swój jeden wątek. W szczególnych przypadkach może być seria gier. NIE NALEŻY TUTAJ PYTAĆ O ZASADY, MALOWANIE, ROBIENIE INSERTÓW ORAZ KOSZULKI! OD TEGO SĄ INNE PODFORA
# of Players
2 − 4
Mfg Suggested Ages
10 and up
Playing Time
60 minutes
Co wyróżnią ten tytuł wśród innych tytułów na motywie aliena?
Brak losowości, wszystko oparte na kartach, kilka dróg do wygranej dla obcego, oraz brak możliwości pokonania obcego (można go jedynie czasowo powstrzymać).
Lifeform is a game of survival horror for two to four players in which one player takes on the role of an almost invincible, utterly hostile alien, while all other players take on the roles of the crew of commercial mining starship, Valley Forge. During each game, the crew, outfitted with glitchy handheld sensors disrupted by a proximate nebula, search their labyrinthine vessel for equipment, weaponry, and supplies to load onboard escape shuttlecraft Remora. Along the way, the alien lifeform will ruthlessly attempt to stop the crew from carrying out this plan.
The crew and alien lifeform both have a unique deck of cards, and each card has symbols on it to indicate possible actions. The alien can move around the starship, attack, cocoon, activate a malfunctioning android, sabotage equipment and the vessel's wiring, scurry into vents, and more; while the starship crew can fire flamethrowers, search, move or run, protect themselves with shock-prods, hide, shut security doors, and other actions.
Lifeform is a standalone, dice-less game that tells of ten commercial astronauts working on a battered mining starship, far away in space and time, who encounter an awesome galactic horror. Featuring an innovative self-destruct game mechanism, and alternate playable endings, depending on crew success, Lifeform presents a tense, suspenseful adventure with each and every game.
Krótki opis mechaniki
Spoiler:
Gameplay? I'm reluctant to go into real detail without art to back things up.
*The game plays fast, much faster than, say, Fury of Dracula or Letters from Whitechapel. They do not have much in common mechanically with those games, but they do share the theme of tracking down an evil entity (except, you won't want to hunt down the alien!)
*All players draw from either a crew or alien lifeform deck of action cards. Each card has a number of possible actions that can be undertaken - these are represented by icons (you must pick one, and one only). None of the cards have numbers upon them nor text. All have a painting/depiction of the crew, or the starship interior, or a dynamic scene.
*The ONLY cards that feature text are the objective cards. These are few in number and provide some replayability - and are kept secret from the alien (initially). The game has a great deal of replay value without them, but they add a little extra something to keep everyone on their toes. Believe me, when I say that the crew will have a tough time just getting off the starship. It also adds a small amount of guesswork on the alien's part: What are they looking for down there? Ooh, maybe I should take a wander down to C-deck...
*The game has a natural narrative. An actual beginning, middle, and end. Gather essential supplies, evade the alien, and then get onto the escape shuttle. And possibly have a fight to the death onboard the shuttle. All this must be done whilst a timer moves down - a self-destruct timer controlled by the crew's actions. Wanna do more searchy-type-stuff? 'Spend' some of your time left, if you wish, but the starship will explode when the tracker reaches destruction.
*Oh yeah. The crew might (very likely) have to also deal with a homicidal android. The alien lifeform player controls Ash the android. We tried having a crew player secretly playing the android - it never worked satisfactorily, lengthening the game, making it semi-coop. So, the alien player now pulls the android's strings. In terms of the surprises the game can pull, having a fellow player go "Ah-ha! You now lose, and I win!" was one surprise too many in a game of gotcha moments. It only felt good to be the android. Everyone else felt cheesed off. And it added another climax. The game felt like Return of the King! with too many endings to wade through.
*Conflicts with the alien can be frequent. Except that the alien is impossible to kill, and has no hit points, and cannot be stunned, or delayed, or anything else. All you can do is fend it off with makeshift equipment. If you can't fend the creature off: you die.
*Each crew player starts by controlling two unique crew members. The alien only ever has one true threat...
*Each game will see a lot of character deaths (maybe all) - but no player elimination. This aspect remains a secret, for now.
*The game has been tuned for 2,3 and 4 players - each having different set ups. Two-player games of LIFEFORM even use some different tokenry. We were VERY clear in our design objectives: the 2-player game must rock on its own.
*The layout of the starship took a long time to reach perfection. Chambers and their connecting corridors and vents, were only added or removed very carefully. There are potential deathtraps (like the main ventilation junction), but they are quicker routes to the shuttlebay, and potentially contain more goodies. Enter at your peril. Or get a decoy working between up-for-it crewmates!
*In the movie, and novelisation, the crew initially (after Brett's death/cocoonment) try to hunt the alien down, and trick it into an airlock. Our game doesn't venture into that territory. The theme works best as a survival horror scenario. If you can fight back against the threat - it diminishes the threat. And also it lengthened the game.
*The decision space for each player is quite large. There are many ways for the alien to win, for instance. She can kill all the crew. She can delay/harass them until the starship explodes. She can sabotage the shuttle using the android. She can secrete herself onboard the shuttle. She can sabotage the ship's systems. Or she can do other secret things. OR, a combination of the above.
Some playtesters liked to have the alien lifeform protect the android, for example, while he goes about his 'business'.
The alien can grow stronger, but the player may decide not to do this - it is a difficult decision. The action cards featuring the "alien becoming/growing more powerful" icon, are on the action cards that display certain other abilities - every card has multiple options, some rarer than others.
*The crew players have to make individual choices, and team choices too. Not just about where to move next inside the labyrinthine starship. Do we collect a ton of coolant, or do I start picking up Halon Gas extinguishers, or energy cells, or other stuff? Oh crap, the power's just failed in the ore refinery chamber! Do I move around that room, or move through it, or get another energy cell to repair it? It is rather dark in there...
*Unlike Ripley in ALIEN, the players have the knowledge that the lifeform may stowaway onboard the shuttlecraft. So, we embraced this and built it into the game. All players can prepare, to some extent, for a possible climax that may never actually materialise. A crew member might save a flamethrower for the game's end - but if you do that, you're not going to get the benefit RIGHT NOW, when the creature is coming for you!
*One of my favourite things about the game, is the way we've handled how the alien stows away onboard the shuttle - it's not a sure thing. It's something the alien has to 'pull off', and is always a terrific surprise to the crew players, when done well. Creating an 'Oh shit!' moment.
*There were a few HUGE design obstacles that had to be overcome before the game was finished. Some of these I hadn't solved when we started playesting. I couldn't. It wasn't possible to do so without seeing what players did inside the starship sandbox, and how they reacted.
Imagine gathering four gamers together and saying, "play this game, but I haven't finished the finale of the game yet - play it until I say stop, or we run out of game!"
I won't describe the solutions, but I will tell you some of the major hurdles:
1. What happens onboard the shuttle?
2. What happens if some of the players decide to launch the shuttle early?
3. What happens when a player's characters are killed?
4. What happens if the alien just wants to sit and do nothing. Especially, if that place is the shuttlebay.
5. What happens if some of the players run to the shuttle, and just sit in it - waiting for one last crew member to gather coolant, or other items, they all need.
6. How to make fighting an invincible opponent fun.
7. How to make the finale tense? - even when one side seems to have a much better advantage (due to playing a blinder of a game).
8. How to make the game enjoyable - even if the crew don't escape the starship, or if the crew keep thwarting the alien.
9. How to balance the game - so that a very experienced alien player can be defeated with some thought, and luck, by greenhorn crew players.
10. How do we make each game feel different? And that there's no perfect way to take on the lifeform, or to hinder the crew.
One of the reasons, to my mind, that there's nothing quite like our game, is that it's harder than you might imagine to design a good game from ALIEN. ALIENS has tons of combat - both sides can take losses - there are many ALIENS-themed or copycat games, as I'm sure you're aware.
In ALIEN, the star-beast isn't defeated until the very end. This is a problem for a game where death of the crew characters is a must.
I'm proud of the innovative ways we've solved each problem. The finished game is diceless, lean, has tricky decisions, feels modern, and is true to the theme. And plays fast.
During playtesting, some people asked theme-specific questions. I included these in the back of the rules, for like-minded individuals. Regarding the rules: they took months to prepare. Not everyone will like their structure, I'm sure, but they cover everything. They feature extensive examples, and situation layouts. People will have questions - they always do - but, be assured, these are no hastily-put-together afterthought.
*One cool thing to leave you with: the shuttlecraft is a large cardboard token that actually connects to the shuttlebay on the gameboard, until you hit 'purge'. You can launch it with a 'wooosh', if you like! But that's not the end of it - you can use the airlock on the token to help fight the stowaway alien.
Biorąc pod uwagę chroniczne opóźnienia wątpie, iż gra faktycznie wyjdzie w 2016 r. mimo zapewnień twórcy.
Spoiler:
*All the card art is finished; 95% of the tokens have been designed; and 95% of the icons have been completed.
*January will see the graphic design of the cards completed - using the art and icons, of course.
*The gameboard is a work-in-progress.
*The rulebook cannot be finished, from a graphic design PoV, until all the other elements have been built.
*The secret crew objective deck of cards (6 cards total) hasn't been started.
*The crew & alien ownership (character) boards haven't been finished.
*One member of crew has still to be painted.
Mimo to bardzo czekam na tą grę choć jeśli polskie Nemesis ukaże się pierwsze pewnie się skuszę.
