Shoot ‘Em Up: Euro Style!

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“Adrenaline”

designed by Filip Neduk

Lock and load and blast your opponents to little tiny bits in this boardgame version of a first-person shooter. Every turn you take two of three possible actions: move, shoot, or pick up either a weapon, an upgrade, or ammo. Cards represent different weapons: play cards to shoot, expend ammo to overcharge certain weapons for added mayhem, and spend ammo to “reload” weapon and bring the card back into your hand for continued death-dealing next round. You do damage by placing your damage counters on their player boards, and they on yours. The more you get hit, the more adrenaline (roll credits) you get, and the better your actions become. When you receive enough damage to die, points are scored: whoever has the most scores the most points, doing the first damage gets a bonus point, and everyone who hits you gets something. Repeat until the skull timer runs out, most points wins! Avoiding combat gets you not killed, but also you don’t actually score any points either.

Great self-balancing mechanics throughout the game, from the fact you are worth less the more you get killed to the way your actions improve the more damage you take. Moreover, the fact you can get points wherever you damage encourages equal death-dealing amongst all players.

One Live Verdict: Lock, load, gear up, and load out (plus any other first-person shooter clichés) for this one.

Shields Up! I said, “Shields… AAAGGGHHHH”

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“Space Alert”

designed by Vlaada Chvatil, published by Czech Games Edition

Try to survive the dangers of space in this real-time programming game. Threats in the form of random space debris and alien ships will hurtle towards your from space and aliens will try to take you from inside your ship! Fire lasers, raise shields, increase power to your different ship systems, control kill-bots, and launch fighters to deal with these threats. But this is a programming game: play your cards in advance in a 10 minute real-time round, and then execute them one at time in the execution to see what actually happens. Maybe you guessed right. Or maybe you’re just hanging out somewhere watching your ship slowly fall apart.

Trying to keep track of one crew member’s actions is hard: doing two at the same time in the 10 minute time limit is well-nigh impossible. But with a full four, it is a frenzied blast.

One Line Verdict: Sign on for this voyage for some fast, tense, space-faring action.