Space Cadets: Away Missions Review

Occasionally, I will play a game that is such a complete success that it makes me really re-evaluate my expectations of games in general. To me, these games are defining moments in my “gaming history”, my own personal narrative in the gaming world, and they are few and far between. Space Hulk (and I mean the first edition) was one of the first games to force upon me the realization that some board games can deliver an interactive narrative on par with film, television and literature. You can watch Aliens, but you cannot be a Space Marine fighting outlandish, deadly xenomorphic killing machines unless you’re playing Space Hulk. Not every game has this quality because the veil between reality and involuntary suspension of disbelief is made of canvas, not gossamer.

Well, I’m delighted to be able to report that Space Cadets: Away Missions is one of these defining games, in that it transports us into the worlds of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. It delivers to players the profound mystery of the unknown, framed in the guise of playing the role of a spaceman, fighting for the fate of the entire human species against a malevolent, motivated, and well-equipped alien menace. In short, this game is breathtakingly spectacular from a design standpoint, and while we were playing, there was this slow and involuntary transformation from a bunch of people sitting in rural Kentucky playing a board game into Rocket Patrol explorers. It was no longer, “Hey, on your next turn, I think you should move to so-and-so and then use your +1 item,” but rather, “We need to get out of here! Shoot that Sentinel, quick!” After a few plays, your character becomes your avatar in this world of ray guns and bulbously-domed Martians, causing you to unconsciously role-play your character during the game. It would almost be insidious if it wasn’t such a good time.

Some may call the game a “dungeon crawl in space”, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong with that characterization, but they also wouldn’t be delivering the whole picture, either. Really, it’s a sort of an especially action-heavy Star Trek away mission, played out on the table in front of you in all its glory. The game ships with a scenario book that is actually substantially thicker than the rules, which are of the “get out of the way and let the folks play” variety; the scenarios form an expertly written, fantastical story arc that begins with our heroes mining on Mercury and ends with them discovering the true nature of the relationship between the Space Leeches and the Brains-In-A-Jar. There are 20 scenarios in all, each unique and interesting.

What makes this game so truly engrossing is the tempo of the action; this game is pretty much non-stop, nail biting action from the first turn to the last. The nature of the very clever exploration system is such that whenever a player’s turn begins, the first thing they do is to uncover any of the closest available hidden tiles, then populate it with one or more alien menaces. Each of the many alien types has its own beautifully detailed model, complete with action poses, and its own set of very unique and varied behavior and abilities. All of this causes a sense of continual, impending doom, which is evidenced by a collective sigh of relief and high fives all around when the current crisis subsides, followed by a collective gnashing of teeth and lamentation when the next exposed tile reveals yet another, many times worse, horror. You see, this game doesn’t need a sand timer to create an artificial sense of urgency, because the less you can accomplish during a turn, the harder subsequent turns become.

Thankfully, the Rocket Patrol is equipped with the culmination of human scientific innovation in a deck of weapons and items that will stave off the ugly and inglorious deaths that would otherwise await our noble heroes and heroines. There are so many tactical options available to the characters not only due to this equipment, but also due to the very unique and widely varying special abilities that are unique to each character. Beyond that, each alien has its own powers that can be activated due to the novel “Overkill” mechanic which rewards good rolls with the ability to utilize each item, character, or alien’s special effect. On top of all of that variety, virtually every tile is pre-loaded with random special discovery items, of which many must be crafted using found items, schematics, and in some cases, body parts from fallen aliens. In short, you can play the same scenario ten times and never have it play out the same as the previous attempts, because if I had to distill the game into one word, it would be “dynamic”.

All that put aside, the true strength of this game is in its ability to spin a believable, exciting tale of discovery, danger, daring, and drama; instead of a 4x design, it’s a 4D game. Every turn you play is infused with a sense of existential dread thanks to the tense, highly randomized enemy spawn system that keeps you on your heels from turn one until the end. The Overkill mechanic plays no small role in weaving these tales because while it is infuriatingly frustrating to roll an improbable amount of successes during an attack attempt and only cause one point of damage to an enemy, when looked at in the frame of the narrative, those rolls are abstract; what actually happened is that in the few seconds of in-game timeline that are resolved by the die roll, one hit was scored, and the remaining Overkills that are awarded represent the events that happened above and beyond the attempt itself.

I have a slight issue with Overkill because these effects can sometimes leave you feeling slighted due to not being able to truly utilize an exceptional roll in the way you might otherwise like to, such as dealing a gaping, green, bleeding hole in an exceptionally tough monster. But, this isn’t that kind of game and I’m projecting. This is a game where you live vicariously through your little plastic avatars, sailing the solar winds and saving mankind from an alien menace, and from that perspective, the perspective of playing out a diverse, tense, and entertaining 1950’s-style science fiction story, it really cannot get any better than this.