XenoShyft: Onslaught Review

Xenosathem: everybody wants it, nobody can pronounce it.

In XenoShyft: Onslaught, One to four players fill the suits of various division heads within NorTec, a futuristic megacorporation. They've discovered Xenosathem, a crystalline substance of incredible power, deep within an alien planet. There's one thing keeping this from being a boring resource-mining simulation: we didn't get there first. The planet's core is home to a hive of bloodthirsty insectoid aliens, enhanced in size and ferocity by the crystal, and they're not keen on sharing. The players must work together to defend the NorTec base against three increasingly terrifying waves of aliens.

That's it. You might expect some ultimate goal beyond survival, but there isn't one. The only way to win the game is to outlast the titular onslaught, keeping the base intact long enough to get the crystal, get out, and nuke the site from orbit- it’s the only way to be sure. To represent this short-term siege, each player gets a pair of lanes, one for bugs and one for humans, with space on them for four cards each. During each of the nine rounds, you'll draw a 6-card hand, add some Xenosathem fresh from the mines, and then spend that valuable resource to hire troops and outfit them with weapons, armor, gadgets and medical supplies. Apparently, capitalism is alive and well in the future, even when you're being swarmed by alien monsters. Resident Evil 4's creepy “what are ya buyin’?” merchant would be proud.

Once you've set up your defenses by playing troops and equipment to your human lane, each alien lane gets filled with four facedown Hive cards. Each three-round wave has its own deck, so they get tougher as you mine deeper. Then, one player at a time, the aliens and the humans butt heads, dealing damage to one another until either the attackers or the defenders are wiped out. If there are still enemies in your lane after you've run out of troops, they deal their damage directly to the base. Troops that were killed in action, along with their equipment, instants you've played, and Xenosathem you spent this round all get added to your personal discard pile, gradually strengthening your deck and making you wonder whether Cool Mini Or Not understand the definition of the word "killed."

So it's a deck-building game, right? Well, not quite. When I got XenoShyft: Onslaught, I knew that I would inevitably compare it to Legendary Encounters: Alien, a game I gave 5 stars in a previous review. They're both sci-fi cooperative deck-building games pitting space marines against swarms of bug-like aliens that are pushed forward on a single-lane conveyor belt. To make the resemblance even more uncanny, both games have three separate decks comprising three waves of increasing difficulty.

But that's all the two games have in common—that, and they're both awesome. While Encounters excels at storytelling and triggering nostalgia for its licensed franchise, XenoShyft is a breakthrough in the gameplay department. Its gameplay stands apart from all other deck-builders out there: if you think of deck-building in terms of Dominion or Ascension clones, XenoShyft will seem as alien as its predators.

First, it removes the resource-building element central to most deck-builders. You won't and can't buy silvers and golds to afford cards that let you draw more silvers and golds. XenoShyft's currency, Xenosathem, can't just be bought. You're limited to the cards in your starting deck and the extra Xenosathem mined each round.(Also, adding free money to your hand each round brilliantly mitigates luck of the draw, making sure you always have funds to patch up any holes in your defenses.

Traditional deck-building tactics like action chaining and deck trimming are also virtually nonexistent. Purchaseable cards exclusively concern dealing and absorbing damage, leaving effects like extra draws and healing to the unique division powers. Purchased cards go straight into your hand, making this deck-builder more about what's happening right now than long-term planning. And XenoShyft breaks a major deck-building taboo by letting you buy cards for other players' decks—indirectly, that is. By playing troops and equipment to an ally's lane, you immediately transfer ownership of the card; it goes in their discard pile, not yours.

Nearly every card and activated ability in XenoShyft can be played on other players' behalf, making this a truly cooperative card game. At the same time, it gives you some good reasons to be greedy. If you play that pulsar shield to help your friend now, who will protect your troops when it's their turn to face the hive? If you donate soldiers and armor to a buddy who got a bad draw, does that weaken your deck in future rounds? By granting players this freedom to cooperate while maintaining agency over their own battles, XenoShyft avoids both pitfalls common to cooperative games. There's enough direct interaction to make it not multiplayer solitaire, but not enough open information to spawn the dreaded Alpha Gamer.

Like I said about Legendary Encounters, no game is perfect. LE was a bit too easy with fewer players, and XenoShyft suffers from the opposite problem. Single-lane solo games are surprisingly quick and fun, and two player games are consisently tight and challenging (in fact, it's probably the best player count), but three or four player games start to snowball in favor of the humans. As with Legendary Encounters, though, the core gameplay's still solid, and the difficulty is easily tweaked back into place.

Finally, XenoShyft appears to have a variability problem. The same aliens appear in the Hive decks each play, with the same troops becoming available at the same times. Every card type has a "just enough" mentality—in fact, there are not enough 6-Xenosathem cards to support a 4-player game, although this problem can easily be fixed by proxies. On the other hand, this keeps things tight in terms of game balance, and division abilities, available item cards, and the specific bugs appearing each round do plenty to keep the game feeling fresh. I'd love to bulk out the game with some expansions, such as those that Kickstarter backers received, but the replayability issues are more perceived than real.

However you say "Xenosathem," you should say yes to XenoShyft.