Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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a review of Vlaada Chvátil's "Space Alert"
Edit: Added that I'd actually played both Ghost Stories and Arkham Horror, too. Hurried as I was when writing, they just didn't stop by my mind at first.
Introduction
As many of you know, Space Alert won the 2009 Spiel des Jahres Neue Spielwelt, which roughly translates as "Innovative Game of the Year" (apart from THE Game of the Year that Dominion claimed). I couldn't agree more.
However, I will admit I am a bit "too much" right on the spot as an intended audience. I am an old Robo Rally player. In fact, it was my portal into post-adolescent gaming. I've played it hundreds of times, so I'm pretty used to programming my pawn in advance and resolving it later, like you do in Space Alert. Also, I love co-operative games, as I enjoy sharing the joys of victory much more than I enjoy defeating others.
However, although I personally think this game overshines Dominion by far, I can't say the Spiel des Jahres jury was wrong - Space Alert's biggest flaw is its being narrow: As I will describe below, it's virtually only playable on 4 or 5 players, it needs a CD player close by and is also pretty narrow in terms of gamers - you need players who can cope with planning in before hand and do it on a timer.
Brief game overview
In Space Alert, the players cooperate in order to keep their space ship functional, which basically means moving around the ship's six locations and pressing various buttons, all the while a machine voice keeps telling them in what ways the ship is being attacked - or in what ways it's breaking down. The voice in question is a CD track of about 8 minute's length. So you'll need a CD player close by to play the game, although you can assign a non-participating player the role of the voice, using a clock timer and a mission briefing card.
The players actually don't move their pawns or make moves while the CD is playing. Instead, they are placing cards face down before them to form a program of a total of 12 steps. The cards are simple, saying either "move starboard/portside" or "press button A/B/C". The CD track also acts as the game timer, limiting the time the players have to create their programs.
Once the CD track has finished, the game is over and it's time to check, card by card, what actually happened. The CD voice has announced when and where enemies appear, and this has been kept track of while programming. So step by step, enemy pawns/markers are placed, players reveal their cards, pawns are moved, buttons are pressed, weapons are fired etcetera etcetera.
If the ship survives all 12 steps and isn't destroyed by the various threats and malfunctions, the players win.
Components
Space Alert consists of a game board showing the ship and it's 6 locations, cards depicting threats of variable difficulty levels, a lot of programming cards, a bunch of wooden cubes to mark energy and hit points, some cardboard tokens, and finally some plastic minis for the five crew members, battle robots and the rockets.
There are also, sold separately, glass cubes for the wooden cubes that go on the board, making it look a bit more spacey. They're ridiculously expensive, 8 dollars for about 30 glass beads, but if you get them, they do look nice. In fact, VERY nice.
And of course, there are the CDs. Everything in the box is good quality.
image courtesy of Jan Vondráček. This is however, a prototype, but if gives a good view on what the game in play looks like:
The game in play
Now, in my reviews, I usually make a game play description comprehensive enough that it more or less is a shortened rulebook. In the case of Space Alert, I won't. The reason is pretty simple: There is too much going on. Indeed, pointing that out is pretty much the point of this review. Instead, I'll give a rough overview. If you don't care for this section, just scroll down to "Verdict".
As you can see on the above picture, the space ship has 6 locations: Port side (red) upper and lower, center (White) upper and lower, and starboard (blue) upper and lower. Each location has 3 buttons: A, B and C. The 'A' button is invariably firing some sort of laser cannon in the location in question, the 'B' button is recharging the section's shield (upper level) or recharging the power generator (lower section). The 'C' button does different things depending on location, like activating battle robots, firing a rocket, maintaining the ship's computer and so on.
All players start in the upper central (white) section. The ship's generators and shields start basically half-loaded with energy. But as mentioned, players won't actually move their pawns while the CD is on (they can if they wish, but it doesn't affect the game). Instead, they will have to make a 12 steps long program for their character. All players have 3 stacks of 5 cards each, as the 12 programming steps are divided into three phases: step 1-3, step 4-7 and step 8-12. Players will program one phase at a time, so they will start with programming the first 3 steps with these first 5 cards they get. The cards say things like "move starboard" or "push button B" and so on. So what it's all about is program your fellow to move around the ship pressing buttons.
Ready for take-off, and start the CD track.
The voice will prompt you to "start first phase", which means pick up the first 5 cards and look at them. Pretty soon afterwards it will announce that an enemy approaches. The voice announces when (in what step) the enemy appears and, if it's an external enemy, where (port, center or starboard). The captain draws a corresponding Threat card, places it down near the affected part of the ship, so everyone can see how many hit points it has, how much shields it has, if there are any special effects, and most importantly, what the threat does - mostly it does damage to the ship at certain points.
Then hell breaks loose.
An attempt at controlled chaos
Okay, someone needs to shoot that bugger down, which basically means to put a "move starboard" (or wherever the enemy appeared) card in step 1 and then a "press button A" (which is firing the main laser) in step 2. So far, so good, it's just that in order to fire the laser, the corresponding power generator needs to have power. Sure, it starts with 2 power, but once you've fired the laser twice, then what? So, you'll need another guy to go down into the basement and press button B to recharge the generator that powers the laser.
Anyone's got a card to use the lift? Sorry, you can't change cards unless the CD claims "data transfer", which at most lasts for 10 seconds. During that period you can give another player one of your cards.
So far, so good, but now the central power generator is empty and needs to be recharged, and suddenly the CD announces that first phase ends in twenty seconds, you'd better get your cards down for the first three steps.
First phase ends in five, four, three, two, one. First phase has ended. Please start second phase.
Players take the second pile of cards and add it to their hand of cards remaining from the first phase. They can't program or change anything for the first three steps at this point. And suddenly the CD announces that another enemy appears in step 4 on the port side. And shit, this bastard will cause damage to the ship in step 5, better charge the shield. Did anyone go port in step 3, so they can shoot straight away in step 4? I guess not. Charge the shields then, and amagad, there is no energy left to fire the laser. Please, can someone charge the port side generator? I can, but the central generator isn't fueled. Sure, I can fuel the central one in phase 4, but I need a 'B' card, give me one the next data transfer. Warning! Serious threat in T+6, zone white, serious threat in T+6, zone white. Oh.my.god, a frigging huge meteor is closing, is ANYONE left on the bridge? Sure I am! Then fire that laser! I will, I'm firing in step 6 and 7, but I hope there is energy in the central reactor. Yeah, we fueled it in step 4, and reloaded the lateral one in step 5, so there should be 2 left. Good, but I need three shots, please get back to the central reactor in step 8 and refuel it so I can get the last shot, because if we don't get the meteor by step 10, it'll crush us!
And suddenly the CD voice announces that the communications systems are down, and no player is allowed to speak while the speakers emit white noise.
Data transfer, who needed a B? I did. Did anyone maintain the computer in step 8 or 9? Yeah, sure, but I hope that starboard attacker is taken care of! Yeah, it should be, I fired three times, as long as there was energy. Yeah, I reloaded that, and fired the side laser while I was at it, so we should be safe. Good, now can you get back central by phase 8 and refuel the reactor?
And so on.
Finally, second phase ends, players pick up the last 5 cards and while the CD is spitting out more dangers, program the last five steps. The mission ends, the CD stops, players lay down their cards panting and it's time to see how stuff worked out.
The facing of What Really Happened
Moment by moment, each step is resolved. Enemies appear, cards are revealed and resolved, lasers are fired, damage to enemies is calculated, and finally the enemies move closer in and resolve any actions that they do. It usually goes something like this:
"Okay, the enemy in step 1 appears... there is none, so reveal cards in step 1, okay you go starboard, you go down using the lift, you maintain the computer. Right, so step 2, this enemy appears here, you press button A, nice one, and you go down and OH MY GOD why am I going port side?"
[several steps later]
-Why didn't anyone reload the starboard reactor?
-I thought you did?
-I'm firing the laser again... but nothing happens.
-Yeah, I reload this reactor, it's just that there is no central energy, so...
-Ehm, guys, this meteor just does 3 damage to every frigging section... We're toast.
Or, if the players did well, the ship actually survived all 12 steps, and you can (if you wish) calculate points to judge the level of your success. It's basically that you get a certain number of points per enemy you survived/shot down minus any damage to the ship or the players. But it's not that important. What's important is that you actually made it.
Verdict
I'll get straight to the point: Space Alert is hands down the coolest co-op I ever saw, and it was during my latest play of this that I realized exactly why.
I've played and enjoyed Pandemic, Lord of the Rings, Shadows over Camelot, Arkham Horror, Ghost Stories and Battlestar Galactica. As I see it, the two problems that co-op games face stem from that they're essentially puzzles to be solved (Camelot and Galactica spice the game up by having traitors). I said two problems. The first one is that they need to be randomized and varied. Without the puzzle varying, the game will become "just the same thing again and again". In this aspect, Lord of the Rings and Camelot do badly. Pandemic, Ghost Stories and Arkham Horror do nicely.
And, so does Space Alert. Sure, there are only 8 tutorials and 8 real missions, and playing the same mission a lot will have you remember when and where enemies appear. But exactly what enemy will appear varies (it's a card draw), and that is enough. They will require different actions to cope with, some can't be targeted with lasers, some not by rockets, and also, there are the threat trajectories that they travel on:
Image courtesy of Robert Buciak
And as you see, the tracks are of different lengths - which means the threats will sometimes have shorter to the ship. And some of the tracks have two "Y" spaces on them (and some don't even have a Y). It's when the threat tokens reach these X, Y and Z that the threat in question will cause damage (or have some other devious effect). So these tracks will very much randomize the game. You even have "lighter" and "harder" versions for both "normal" and "serious" threats in the threat draw pile, so... you are facing a different challenge each time, even if you play with the same mission. (And really, if you enjoy the game enough to wear all 8 missions out, designing a mission just for the sake of variation isn't a difficult business, and the Geek is probably teeming with them.)
Delegation - why Space Alert shines
The second problem that stems from co-ops being puzzles to solve is the "one player plays all" problem. In Camelot, you virtually have very few real decisions to make, it's mostly obvious what you should do. The same in Lord of the Rings, although that is a bit harder to read. In Pandemic and Ghost Stories, I've seen many times that a will-weak player will simply just say "what should I do?" and all will discuss what that player should or should not. And yes, I'm guilty there. As I'm usually the game owner, "explaining the game" easily turns into "actually saying what they should do". Not so for Space Alert.
In Space Alert, that just isn't possible. It ISN'T POSSIBLE. With the CD spewing out new stuff all the time, and all players sitting on different cards, playing the game for other players is beyond what any mind can manage - there just isn't time! You can ask people to do this, tell them to do that, but that's where it ends. You HAVE to trust them being able to take care of themselves, program their own cards, understanding the game and acting on their own. Shortly, in Space Alert, you have to delegate. Players must handle their station on their own; the game is so short, only 12 steps, that one player can't possible move around much, that takes much too much time. So everyone has their post and does his/her best to take responsibility for it: "Did anyone take care of that starboard meteor?" -"Yeah, I'm there, leave the starboard threats to me, but I need someone to reaload the lateral generator in step 5" -"Consider it done, I'm there. Please someone, refuel central reactor after step 5, anyone who can!". -"It's done, and I also maintained the computer in step 4". And so on.
I have never, in any co-operative game I've played, experienced that feeling of absolute teamwork that Space Alert conveys. A Space Alert mission is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. One player messes up, it can be a disaster. The difference in mission results when players are new to each other, and when they have played a couple of missions and started acting like a team, is thrilling. I played this four times straight with the same 5-man team, and we were blown to smithereens in step 6 the first time. The last time we scored such a huge victory we were laughing a long time after. The serious threat that we had had trouble with was so thoroughly overkilled it was ridiculous and our ship was left completely unscathed.
The secret to that is communication and synchronization and that everyone keep his mind on his task but at least a little tiny bit on "what might go wrong" and asks other players if it's taken care of. Recharging the reactors at the right time, synchronizing the laser fire, keeping track of what card to give to whom (because when data transfer come up, you have no more than 10 seconds!) and being at the right place at the right time. And know what to do with your spare two steps when you're just waiting for that reactor to empty up.
Space Alert manages to do away with the "one player plays all" in the most fascinating way I've seen.
I have to admit, though, that this perk is also Space Alert's weakness: Really, this is a 4 or 5-player game. If you enjoy the game like I do, it's next to completely unplayable on 3 or, god forbid, 2. With 2 or 3 players, you have to have a "bot" running around, that all players can program. It's too much. You don't get "just your station". You can't just trust the others. Suddenly you have this other thing to ALSO take care of. I've tried. I have. The game's no fun. This game draws everything from the feeling of teamwork, and on 2 or 3 players, it just doesn't work. Solo? Forget it. Sure, to learn the mechanics. Else, just don't.
Space Alert's strength relies on that it forces the players to really act like a team and learn like a team. That also means that without this team, there is no game. You need a CD player and you need to be four or five players who can cope with this weird combination of programming in advance instead of moving pawns, and of absolute chaotic everyone-at-a-time communication and missions that require absolute synchronization of what the players are doing.
But if you get there, this co-op beats the lot. This is one of the most amazing games I've ever seen.
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Jacob Russell
Canada
Vancouver
British Columbia
Bullshit!
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Great review! I'd buy it if I didn't already own it.
Quote: Space Alert manages to do away with the "one player plays all" in the most fascinating way I've seen.
Very, very true. This game makes it clear that Pandemic really is a multi-player solitare puzzel compared to the actual game included in the Space Alert package. I was quite impressed with how we all need to think and act and there just isn't time for one guy to boss everyone else around.
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Don Barree
United States
New Jersey
General Bonkers says the War on String may be unwinnable. Detractors worry that his statements will embolden string.
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Nice review! I also already own it but you did an excellent job of conveying the play experience. I wholeheartedly agree that it is the best co-op game out there.
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I disagree with only one point in your excellent review: I've only ever played Space Alert with three players (and one android), and it's been a blast. Admittedly, we haven't added internal threats yet, and I can see how having even more to take care of could get unmanageable with fewer players, but we still have so much fun that I could care less about not getting the "full" game experience!
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Dick Leban
United States
Austin
Texas
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celiborn wrote: but we still have so much fun that I could care less about not getting the "full" game experience! The 'droid is too easy even with the "can't pick it up the card after it's been played" rule. Having the fourth player spouting his own opinions and screwing things up really cranks up the carnage. You really should find a fourth.
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Dan
United States
San Francisco
California
I must think over my position and how I may improve it.
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Quote: I have never, in any co-operative game I've played, experienced that feeling of absolute teamwork that Space Alert conveys.
This is exactly why I like Space Alert too.
I disagree on the 2p thing though. I think the limitations the game system puts on bots (specifically, that you can't change their moves later) is enough to require just as much coordination from 2 players. I'm biased though. I've only played it with 2 players, but as soon as I finished the first few missions, I knew I had something special.
I really like the idea of coop games, but I've never run into one I like. Pandemic and SoC bored me. Space Alert is pure innovation and my top game of the year (although I haven't played a lot of the other ones on the list).
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David Vanden Heuvel
Canada
Ottawa
Ontario
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Great review. We don't play with a CD player. I've downloaded and transferred the MP3 files onto a micro SD card that stays in the game box. I then use my BlackBerry to play the audio tracks.
But yeah, you need something that'll play the audio (whether it's a CD player or some other audio device) unless you want someone to read the script "manually"
[edit: I will add that I think the game takes a while to learn. I've "taught" it 4 or 5 times to different groups but never really got into the missions yet. You need to learn the game by making the mistakes and that just takes time. I've recently taught it to a group that really likes it and is itching to play it again. So maybe I'll actually get to play the missions next time... ]
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TVDinner wrote: celiborn wrote: but we still have so much fun that I could care less about not getting the "full" game experience! The 'droid is too easy even with the "can't pick it up the card after it's been played" rule. Having the fourth player spouting his own opinions and screwing things up really cranks up the carnage. You really should find a fourth.
One day we will! But we've found that the android just gave us one more thing to argue about. 
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Saulius Sabaitis
Lithuania
Jonava
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This is a realy good rewiev, after reading it, i wuld like to try it out.
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Rami Finkelshtein
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
Just another day on the staircase
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This game is a true gem and I love it to pieces. For one group I taught the training mission (and they thought it was SOOO easy) to which point I turn on one of the full missions and we just got exploded to little pieces. The game is really all about communication. No one person can ever do everything or comprehend everything. When new threats come out we eventually learned to call it. For example a threat would come out on blue and two players would just say "we got it" and run off. No one ever asked again about that threat unless the two players said they need help with it or something. Needless to say there were some games where I just had to trust people to take care of 1-3 threats without my intervention and had to know that if they needed something they would ask.
A great exercise in communication and a load of fun!
Also as for the androids. I have played both two and three player (as well as 4 and 5) I feel that the androids are a little easier than an actual player. Adding another player often adds communication confusion which is much worse than just having to discuss an additional thing (the robots programing) however the whole "can't remove anything on a droid" has come back to bite us in the ass a few times, or rather to take a nice chunk off our ship a few times and you can still get the experience with fewer than 4 players)
As for the sounds. I have it downloaded on my ipod Touch...I put it beside myself and act as communications officer and everyone hears everything thats going on...great load of fun. There are also random mission generators (two of them) that are both quite amazing and make the game infinatley replayable..now with the expansion coming out and the new threat cards...well I just can't wait to get this game out more
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I got it yesterday and played a couple of tutorial missions with my friend. We didn't try the internal threats but we sure will next time.
It was awesome! We had lots of fun, especially when my friend killed off everything in the red zone with 5 shots with the heavy cannon... Only, the threats were in the blue zone. I'm so looking forward to try out real missions with 4-5 people!
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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No idea. They cost €5 on Essen, which I gather is about $8.
It's more $0.2 per piece. Seems ridiculous. There just HAS to be cheaper glass beads to get. Equal glass beads with a drilled hole in them host about $0.04. The hole does make them less attractive, though.
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Zimeon wrote: a review of Vlaada Chvátil's "Space Alert"
[size=7]
In this aspect, Lord of the Rings and Camelot do badly. Pandemic, Ghost Stories and Arkham Horror do nicely.
What is the LotR co-op game?
Where does BSG land in your list above? :-)
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Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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ZippyDan wrote: What is the LotR co-op game?
Lord of the Rings
ZippyDan wrote: Where does BSG land in your list above? :-)
The randomness is decent, and so is the feeling of cooperation. However, as there is one (or two) guaranteed traitor(s) you're essentially trying to defeat, it's more of a team game, and the teamwork is more each handling his or her own part of the dangers; there is no real need to ultra-synch what is done. Much of the game instead consists of you trying to figure out who the traitor is.
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Andy De Mulder
Belgium
Gent
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This review was as surprising as it was excellently written. I never heard of this game. Now, it's on my wish list. Since our gaming group mostly has 5 players, and we like co-op games, this seems like a great game to own. Thanks for the great review!
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Gene Chiu
Canada
Vancouver
B.C.
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Very good review. I have played Pandemic and find that I tend to solve the game for the team. I am very interested in the aspect of Space Alert where you cannot really take over all of the other players' moves and have to rely on everyone to do their part in order to succeed. I definitely will be checking out this game.
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Jeremiah Lee
United States
Ypsilanti
Michigan
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Add me to the "now-on-wishlist" people.
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Joe Stude
United States
Plymouth
Michigan
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wishlist? With gaming sessions coming up each of the next two weekends, this has jumped right on my "run-to-the-store-now" list.
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Jeremiah Lee
United States
Ypsilanti
Michigan
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And I now own it, as of 2 hours ago.
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Joe Stude
United States
Plymouth
Michigan
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very nice. i look forward to sharing some impressions of my own after the weekend.
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