My friend got this for Xmas for his bro (our gaming group is about 22-23 in age) and we played this last night. (For the record, I had NOT seen the show)

First: the rule book is LONG and CONFUSING, we struggled through it for about 2 hours (no joke) and it went from us having no idea what anything is happening, to actually having a blast playing it.

What the game is about is that most of your team is human and one is a Psilon (no one knows who). The actual game is easy, despite the massive rules. Basically on your turn, you draw some cards based on your characters specialty. I was a pilot, so most of my cards had to do with piloting +tactics. Then you move and then do an action. Generally the action is either get more cards, fight, or rarer stuff like look at someone's Loyalty. (As a pilot, I was never on the ship, 90% of the time, I was out fighting)

After this, you draw a 'crisis' card which is often attacks/fuel leaks etc. This is where the cards come into play. There are a few colors that can solve the problem (each specialty comes in 5 colors, piloting=red, tactics=purple etc) So, starting with me, i put a random amount of cards down (I was human, so i try to match the color) and it went around. There are two random cards additionally. Off the first turn, we had 2-3 BIG cards of the wrong color, it meant we had a psilon in our midst!

This is where the game got fun. According to the rules, you 'can't accuse people of being psilons' which made absolutely no sense. The ENTIRE fun of the game was the back and forth 'he is the psilon, lock him up!' 'but wait, she unloaded a lot of cards at that last crisis, and we lost, it has to be her!' Screaming/yelling ensued
(all in the spirit of the game)

You only get 5 cards once every 6 rounds (only on your turn) so you have to budget the impotence of this crisis, vs longevity of your hand for a potentially more important crisis.

Halfway through, you deal out another psilon card. This was another fun moment, the humans had basically narrowed down the psilon, but now suspicions ran rampart, there WAS another one out there! Strong alliances broke down, new ones formed.

The images look a little weak, but once you get into the game, the pieces fit, and get the job done. The ever-counting down resources were a cool escalating intensity. Fuel is low! Kill the population! Population is getting low, take morale hits!

The humans eventually got surprised killed when we realized our morale was too low and lost it on a card the psilons dumped everything into getting it to fail. So we lost (super close to earth too!) but it was super fun.

Here are a few criticisms though: the ending feels a little lacking, it was all intense, then it comes down to one card, you lose and all the pressure was for naught. Almost a massive let down instead of some epic final clash.

2ndly: the humans have a HUGE disadvantage, our 2 psilons were not that good, and we got lucky because the 'sympathizer' remained human. 3 psilons would be impossible to beat. Even with 2, I give the humans about a 20% chance of success.

3rd: The alien ships don't really DO much. There will be tons on the board, and sometimes they will go crazy, kill tons of resources, but often just kind of sit around and multiple. Further, fighting them is almost just an afterthought. I was a pilot, and did it because it was my job, but the actually game came down to the crisis, not fighting off the ships.

Anyway, really fun overall, post any comments/questions and I can try to answer it.