I've been having a real craving to play games lately, but as my time
and opponents are in short supply, I reached into the box at the back
of the games closet and dusted off this old solitaire game. I played
it a lot back when it first came out, but it has been a very long time
indeed since it saw my tabletop.

Premise
The idea behind the game is an alien artifact has arrived in orbit and
NASA is sending a space shuttle (the Discovery to be specific) to
examine and explore it to see if anything can be figured out.

Components
The components are pretty standard for SPI games of the era - very
decent cardboard counters, and nice simple graphics.

There are three sets of coloured artifact chambers (white, green, and
yellow), which represent the different sections of the artifact, and a
number of information markers to help you keep track of what you
discover as you go along. There are 16 of two colours and 17 of the
third.

Rules and Flow of Play
Damocles Mission is a paragraph driven solo game, which means you take certain actions and you will be sent to a paragraph in the back of the rules to find out what the outcome is.

The rules are ordered in standard SPI format and fairly clear.

You are given a mix of possible mission participants (astronauts and a variety of scientists such as physicist, biologist, semanticist, etc). You must have two astronauts to pilot the shuttle to the artifact (and safely home).

You can take as many as six people on the mission, but the more people you take the less time you have as you have 200 mission days divided by the number of participants. So if you take four people, you have 50 days to explore the artifact, but if you take six, you'll only have 33.

You also have a selection of equipment to take along, with a limit of one per mission member. Some items can only be used by a specific scientist type. For instance, the ohmmeter can only be used by the engineer or the physicist.

The different roles also come with certain advantages - for example, a physicist gives a bonus to your roll if using the right piece of equipment.

From the three sets of artifact tiles, you randomly choose 12 of each, meaning you'll have a different set every time you play. You randomly choose between the three colours, and place that tile adjacent to your shuttle and begin.

On the back of each tile will be three sets of numbers and the equipment type you can use. For example, the tile back might say:

Vision - 11...21
Ohm - 22...44
Pyro - 13...51

This means you can use vision tools, an ohmmeter, or pyrometer to examine the tile. You roll two six sided dice after making your selection to see what happens - you treat the first die as the "tens" place and the second as the "ones" place - so if you roll a on Vision, you'd be able to flip over the tile to figure out what it is because it's in the range.

Once you flip over the tile, you'll find out if it's a Control tile, a Power tile, or a AI tile. The tile will have the three devices listed on it and different ranges than the discovery index on the back. So while you needed an 11...21 to use vision tools, the vision range on the tile itself might only be 13...16. If you roll under the range, you trigger the "backfire" result - in other words, you figured out what the chamber is, but you messed up somehow.

Backfire results can vary from "this tile is permanently off" to the party member being hurt or even killed, or the tool being used being ruined. If you rolled over the range, you get no information. If you roll within it, you get sent to an information paragraph that will give you some more details about the tile.

Control tiles, if you successfully investigate the tile and it's considered "ON" have a possible activation success roll. If you successfully activate it, you can then attempt to turn other tiles "on". More on that in a moment.

Another result that's possible from informational messages is to gain "information points" - these help you by reducing the total you need to make a roll. The rules are specific that the minus cannot cause a backfire.

Time
Moving from one tile to another requires the discovery of an access way, which is rolled for randomly. You roll until you find one, and you can find up to three from the tile you're one, thus giving you options for moving. Moving onto a new access way uses one day of time.

Another way time is consumed is by rolling doubles - every time you roll a double, poof, there goes another day.

Access ways have a two digit number on them, for example - 54. Every time you are through with a tile and ready to move on to the next one, you roll for adjacent access ways to see if they close. If you roll over 54, then it closes and you need to find another way out!

You keep drawing the same coloured tiles until all 12 are in play and then if you have time, you can move on to another section. Moving to a new section costs 5 information points, which makes it a little harder to figure out the new part, but the more sections you have active at the end of the game, the better it is for you!

Game end and scoring
The game can end in several ways, but the scoring is designed to give you a handicap for the next time you play.

Assuming you manage to get your team back to earth in one piece, but you get no information about the artifact, you'll essentially end up with a zero score and get to go off on another mission with 200 base days. If your mission fails to return to earth and is considered a complete disaster, your next game will allow 300 base days. If you manage to get complete control of the artifact, your next visit will only have 100 mission days. Get two complete disasters in a row and you could have 400 days.

The level of success depends on how much you learned about the artifact and how many sections are "on". Each colour has a different set of criteria for being active.

Replayability
The key to a good solitaire game is the replayability factor - in other words, how motivated am I to play the game again, and how well does the game work when you play it for the second, fifth, tenth, or even hundredth time?

Paragraph based systems suffer from a perforce limited repertoire, and if played often enough, you get to know the pattern in the game much like the plot in a novel you've read several times over. If it sits long enough on the shelf between playings though, it can be fresh every time.

The handicapping system for your next mission gives Damocles Mission some legs as you race against the clock to beat your previous success level. The novel system of using the number of people on the mission as a divisor into the base time is a good one too. Maybe you failed horribly with four and now have 300 base days to play with, so you take six this time - it's still 50 days net, but you have more tools in the box (so to speak).

All that said, the game suffers from having no satisfying climax to the story. There's no "aha!" moment in the game where all is revealed.

Instead, you get cryptic results about what the artifact may or may not do, systems that turn on and off without an identifiable cause (not within the game context that is). This may be realistic in the sense that alien technology is, well, alien, but even though this plays well with the theme, one cannot help but feeling a little empty at the end - you know the result of the mission, but why you did or didn't succeed is a mystery.

To sum up, the idea behind the game is compelling, the game play is smooth, the rules are decent, and the replayability factor is well thought out. But the end result still leaves me wanting. Worth playing, but it might well sit another twenty years before I play it again.