Review of Invasive Species
Review by David Lent
When I received Ares Magazine #2 in the mail, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had a science fiction game. I quickly started reading the rules and discovered that this game has a similar theme as one of my favorite micro games from the Golden Era – Intruder by Task Force Games. This isn’t a clone though, it’s Intruder on steroids. Both games are heavily influenced by Alien the movie, but Invasive Species is more complex than Intruder and has more depth. This is just speculation on my part, but Invasive Species feels like it was meant to be a “regular” game, but was condensed so it could be a magazine game.
The components for the game are a rulebook, map and counters. The rulebook is 8 pages long and has a heck of a lot of information in small type. There is a miniature version of the map on the last page that you are supposed to photocopy so you can keep track of the alien while it is pipe running. It’s obvious the designer did his best to fit as much information as possible in an 8 page book. I had a question about the rules and emailed Ares Magazine and they sent me the answer within 2 hours. What’s really remarkable about this is they replied on a Sunday! I’m used to game companies taking weeks to reply to a rules question. The map is two sided. Both sides have a blueprint of the spaceship, but the back has bigger squares and that side is meant to be used if you are using miniatures. The front side has pictures of the crew members in addition to the blueprint. The square counters for the game represent humans, aliens, humoids (androids), life pods and doors. Round counters represent gear, skills, conditions and alien abilities. I really like how photographs of people’s faces were used on the counters to represent the human crew. I’ve never seen that done before.
Setting up the game is much more involved than in the other Ares Magazine games. I’ll simplify the steps here so you don’t fall asleep reading this. You put the life pod, system nexus markers, supplies and gear in their appropriate places on the board. Next, you put the door closed markers on the airlock. Now, the human player determines which four of the crew are dead and randomly gives each of them a role marker. The other 8 crew get the rest of the role markers. The four dead are placed in the lab and infirmary. Next, you select two crew to be injured and place them in beds in the infirmary. Each living human is now given a skill marker. Finally, the six living/non-injured humans are placed on the map. The alien player takes an energy counter and ability counter and then places his larva counter on the map.
The game is played in turns beginning with the alien’s actions followed by the human actions. There is no set number of turns in the game. It lasts until the alien is dead or all the humans are dead. Each human has 4 actions and the alien has 6. Everything involving a die roll requires a 7 to be successful. Since you cannot roll a 7 on a D6, you must use skills, abilities or additional actions to increase your die roll.
Humans and the alien have a different strategy to win. The alien needs to eat as much food or dead bodies as possible in order to get energy counters that are used to mutate into a bigger, stronger alien with more abilities. It can kill the humans in combat or by destroying nexus markers. There are six nexus markers and three of them represent critical ship’s systems and three are non-essential systems such as coffee makers. If it destroys a critical system, the humans have to send an engineer with a toolkit to fix the system within 4 turns or the ship will be destroyed. The aliens best ability is pipe running. When an alien spends actions to pipe run, he is essentially invisible and humans cannot find him unless they perform a search or move onto his space. The alien player must announce what he is doing by saying things like move-move-forage-forage-hatchXX-move during their turn. He can fool the human player by just banging on a hatch and not going through it. Once a search spots the alien, his pipe running is complete and he’s now visible.
There are numerous strategies the humans can use to win. The first is to find weapons, because unarmed humans are useless against the alien after it has mutated multiple times. Firearms add to a humans ferocity, making it easier for him to injure the alien. Another way to get weapons is to make them. Believe it or not, you get blueprints to make weapons and other device by performing autopsies. Performing autopsies is critical in this game, because it destroys dead bodies preventing them from becoming food for the alien. The blueprints allow characters with certain skills to use ingredients and equipment found on the ship to make powerful weapons and devices. This is the first board game I’ve seen where you can construct items. Usually, this type of gameplay is exclusively in the domain of video games. It adds a lot of fun to the game. Another strategy is trapping the alien by having a human with the operations skill on the command deck remotely close doors. You want to trap the alien and then attack him with 4 or more humans at once. That’s your best chance of killing him.
When I tried this game, I was concerned that my opponent would have trouble learning the game since I was the only one who read the rules. I explained the game the best I could and apparently I did a good job because he won. He was the humans and I was the evil alien. I concentrated on eating dead bodies and food to mutate. This wasn’t a good strategy. I should have went after the nexus markers to blow up the ship instead. My friend got someone with the operations skill on the command deck and he closed all the doors near me so I was trapped. Before I could break a door down, he opened it and charged me with four humans. My alien got injured and instead of trying to flee, I wasted actions healing. The next turn the humans got two hits on my alien and he died.
I enjoyed this game and if I ever get a chance to play it a second time, I think I’ll do a lot better. The unique elements in this game such as performing autopsies and constructing weapons really enhanced the game play. The rulebook would have been better if it wasn’t so condensed, but that’s a minor thing. It’s really great that Ares Magazine is producing games that cover unique topics and can be readily learned by beginners.
Buy your own copy here.
