In Space No-one Can Hear You Scream

On Monday evening Mrs Kobold and I went to see a special presentation of 'Alien' at our local cinema. She'd seen it on the big-screen when it was first released, but I was too young, so have only ever seen it on TV. Suffice to say that it's well worth the effort on the big screen, even if you know exactly what's going to happen at each point.

Anyway, when I got home I unearthed my copy of this game:

Published in 1980, it's designed to give you that authentic, unlicensed 'Alien' experience, as the crew of the deep-space station 'Prometheus' (yes, really) attempt to track down and neutralise a rogue specimen from the nearby planet before it kills them all. It's designed as a solo game; you play the crew and the game plays the Intruder, although there are options for a player-controlled Intruder and another variant where the science officers are played by a third player and have a different scoring schedule than the rest of the crew.

Here's the space-station with the counters ready for play. There are nine crew-members, three each of command, engineering and science. Each specialism has their own unique abilities; for example engineers can improvise certain weapons, command can access restricted areas of the ship and science officers can deal with captured lab animals.

Scattered around the ship are nine face-down counters. These are a mix of dummy sensor readings, escaped lab-animals ('Jones! Jonesy!'*) and, of course, the Intruder. These move randomly around the ship whilst the crew have to track them down, removing the dummies and maybe recapturing the lab animals. In addition, of course, they have to find and deal with the Intruder.

As the game progresses the Intruders metamorphoses, becoming bigger and more powerful, so the crew are working against the clock. In its early stages it's not very aggressive, and the crew aren't allowed to simply kill it (except in self-defence). So initially the game is about getting hold of cages, sleep-dart guns and electric prods in order to capture the beastie. Once it gets bigger and more dangerous they can use the deadlier weapons they have access to, but the Intruder is tougher. As it metamorphoses it acquires powers, many of which are immunity to particular weapon effects.

Here you can see the crew grabbing cages from the lab. They have already revealed a dummy reading.

This team discovered an escaped lab animal and tried to catch it. They can be caged and taken back to the lab, where they can be permanently secured, so they don't re-enter the game. This makes it easier to track down the Intruder.

The crew were well kitted out by now, and were methodically searching the ship. I played a variant where you don't roll for the Intruder metamorphosis until the crew find it; you simply record how many rolls it would have made. Thus the crew have no real idea how dangerous it will be when they encounter it, nor whether it will be resistant to the weapons they have.

Their methodical searching bears fruit. One of these three counters is the Intruder.

It's not the one in the access shaft (thank goodness).

In fact it's this one ...

... which moves, and enters a compartment with two crew in it.

The Intruder turned out to be on the third of its six life-stages, and resistant to the flamethrowers and nerve gas the crew were kind of depending on to kill it.

The Intruder attacked the command officer, who was armed with a dart gun. The crewman fired, and put the Intruder to sleep.

And that was it really. The sleeping Intruder was caged, and the crew quickly rushed it to the ship's freezer. It could still metamorphose, and gain either immunity to being frozen, or become strong enough to break out of the cage. However it didn't.

Awake and angry, but trapped in the cage, the Intruder was frozen, for further study. Or return to Earth.

So, something of an anti-climax. However I recall that this is often the case with the game. At its lower life-stages the Intruder is fairly vulnerable, plus the nature of the game - one Intruder vs many crew, and a binary combat system where either something is neutralised or isn't, means that lucky rolls can take it out quite quickly. One of the powers allows the Intruder to clone, creating multiple threats, and it's fairly clear that unless the Intruder gains that power fairly quickly it's going to be in trouble. I confess, however, that the Clone power doesn't work for me; I rather like the idea of one Intruder vs the crew. I have found some alternate powers on the 'net, which I might try in the place of clones. These could beef up the Intruder even at the early life stages, and make a solo one harder to take down. Even in this game cloning wouldn't have saved the Intruder, since the situation where its clones are brought into play didn't happen.

It was fun getting the game out again. Those in the know will note that I wasn't using the original counters. There was an issue with the original game in that the Intruder counters were a different colour to the other face-down ones, and in the right light the colour reflected off the white map-board (seriously). I had a hand-drawn set from many years ago, but actually found a nice PDF set yesterday, and made them before I played the game. They are bigger and easier to handle than the original ones as well.

*In the game's blurb there's a tenth crew-member, killed by the Intruder when it escaped from the lab. Their name is Jones.