You got your Atmosphere in my Station!

Two great tastes that burn together!

Chimps, telepathic mice, super spies, unstable isotopes and lawyer robots.

Would you believe it’s also a super thinky euro game?

It kinda is.

It’s also a chaotic heist movie maker in a space station that is rapidly plummeting to Earth while everything is going wrong, and no matter how good your plans are, they will be ruined by the other players.

I’ve heard it described as the “Beer & Pretzels game for the Complex crowd,” and I think that’s a fair assessment. You’ve got to think ahead a LOT, you’d got to plan and do a bit of deception and deal with the vast complexities the plethora of different player powers on the table do when they interact. BUT you also have to realize that all of that planning can get shot in the arse when the gravity gets shut off and your hidden character gets mind controlled and walks into a carnivorous plant. Or missiles get launched into the section of the ship you’re currently floating in. Or antimatter is released. Or a rampaging monster just happens to wake up next to you. Or that person you were bribing to help you just happens to be the other player who doesn’t want to play along. Or…

You get the idea.

It’s weird.

But it’s also weirdly fun and creates some weirdly fun stories.

(It’s also not out yet. As of this writing, it’s being pumped out by factories and will be getting on a boat in a few weeks. I’m all cutting edge and stuff)

It’s also incredibly difficult to describe, so the best way is to be Very Wordy about it ™, so I guess I should just start rambling, shall I?

Here is home. It’s big. There’s 41 rooms all floating in space. For now. If the rooms are pink, there’s no gravity there (because it’s not spinning enough), if they’re blue, there is gravity. That only matters for throwing things, but it’s important, because hucking things around can be a big freaking deal. There are also escape pods at the top of the board….but saying top is weird because there’s no “up” in space, but I’ll say top for now. Let’s let SOMETHING make sense, dangit.

You’ll also see some rooms are already “dark,” which just means there aren’t security cameras in there (no one wants to see you nekkid, even in the future) as well as a few lines that show vents…which is perfect for xenomorphs to crawl through. That movie made air vents to be MANDATORY xenomorph crawling size.

And these are the people on the station at the moment the alarm goes off stating “15 minutes to Stationfall.” That’s a lot of people. Every game will be played with AT LEAST 12 people. Each person has their own special abilities (the one or two colored blocks of text in the middle of the card) as well as victory conditions if that character is “you.” Of course, you don’t have to ever reveal to the rest of the table that you are, say, the Station Chief. You can control ANYBODY at ANY TIME. The currency of the game is Influence Cubes that you place on the character cards that lets you activate the characters and has them do whatever you want. But, if you reveal yourself (heh), you get an extra special ability (the ability under the eyeball in the lower right of the card). Of course, now the rest of the table knows EXACTLY what you need to do to score VPs, so they know how to stop you, but maybe it’s too late….

Thought experiment time: This game can play with 9 players. With 9 players, there are 20 characters in the space station. That’s 20 characters that can be activated, and 9 will be every turn (mostly). 20 special abilities to keep track of, 20 victory point pathways you want to be aware of and try to stop while trying to get your own without making it OBVIOUS so other players don’t immediately stomp on you.

Chaos, absolute chaos.

But maybe fun?

I’ve only played with 2 players. Today (and over the next month or so, probably), I’ll be playing with 3. Myself and 2 “bots.” The game comes with “Station Automation,” a way to play with any of the characters as automated opponents as a means to increase player count so games don’t get stale by playing against the same people. From what I’ve seen in the Ion Games Discord server, it’s been play tested quite a bit, but I can’t imagine all possible combinations have had extensive testing, so I imagine a lot of wacky things occurring, and I’m all for it.

Then again, playing against a human opponent, I had my Botinist eat half the station using his giant plant, and then had a game where my Cyborg failed miserably as the Telepathic Rat took him over and made him open Project X which killed him instantly. I did get to shoot the Billionaire in the head, which by happenstance was the other player, so we both had a crappy score, but still. Comedy.

ANYWAY

So what’s the point? What are all these people doing on the station, and what do I, as the player, hope to accomplish? Well, let’s look at the two identity cards I was dealt and discuss that shall I?

I have a choice between a Medical Bot and Engineer…um…man. Firstly this “bot” is different than the “bot” as of an Automated Opponent. That’s going to make this kind of confusing, I think. This character in the game has a gear shaped piece (look in the upper left of the Medical card), so this Character is considered a Bot for all game purposes. The two characters that are going to be dealt out as my opponents are going to be Automated Opponents…which in my head are going to be Bots, even though their characters probably won’t be. I told you it was a thinky game, this is one of the things we’ll have to keep straight in our mind.

So, ignoring the small italicized text under their names (which just gives some setup information), the cards tell us the goals of these two characters: “Be Really Useful” and “Preserve Ecosphere”. Without anything else, we could make our choice based just on this. Do we want to be a Medical robot and try to be really useful, or an Engineer and try to preserve the ecosphere? If we want more information, we can see all the ways that Victory Points are earned underneath those headings.

At this point you’ll see there’s a TON of icons used in this game. That’s because there are SO MANY interactions in play in this game, there is no way they could define everything on little cards. So to help, they used icons, then defined icons on a side page, and then defined everything FURTHER in a character dossier that comes with the game. Rule Pundits rejoice! Playtesters had a grand time arguing “what if” statements and straining the system to its extremes, and they tried to define everything to its ridiculous level in the Dossiers. Which means those of us who are not rules people have to deal with this:

Which actually doesn’t seem so bad, now that I look through it. Anyway, back to our Characters: Our Medical bot scores 2 Victory Points if no down Humans at Stationfall (meaning the end of the game). Then Medical moves a tracker cube up one for every Human it revives and for every Influence Cube on the card when Medical is Revealed. More on that later. The tracker cube will be placed on the Character Card on the table which shows that it could gain from 0 to 7 VPs this way.

The Engineer scores 3 points if it blows up the Antimatter on board the station before Planetfall. 3 points if no Contaminated Characters Escape. 2 points if The Artifact doesn’t Escape (meaning it’s not in an Escaping Character’s possession). Finally 1 VP if Innocent….but doesn’t really care if Guilty. More on that later.

Finally on both cards you see the Reveal power, which is under the little Eye icon. Like I said earlier, it’s smart for other players not to know who you actually are, so you get a bonus if you Reveal who you are. The Medical Bot gains a Bludgeon….which if you think about it, means it can knock down Humans….so it can then Revive them. It’s now more Useful! Go Medical Bot! And the Engineer says “There’s a bomb on the station that will go off in 1 minute.” And it’s ANYWHERE ON THE STATION. When it goes off, that room on the station can’t be used anymore. Including escape pods. Or Antimatter containment. Or the bridge. Or….you get the idea.

Finally there’s a nice little Tip for new players (like me). Then you see the character name upside down with a few Stars next to them. That’s if you DON’T select that character as “you.” The other character either becomes your “Friend” or your “Grudge.” If there’s a Escape icon on the star, they’re your Friend. If there’s a Down icon on the star, they’re your Grudge. You gain those VPs if that other character Escapes or is Down at Planetfall respectively. A further wrinkle in the game.

They both look like a heap of fun to play, but I’m going to go with the Medical bot, because the idea of playing a robot hell bent on being “Useful,” so much so that it’ll injure someone just so they can “fix” them is kinda awesome. So I keep Medical right side up, and then turn the Engineer upside-down to show that I have a Grudge against him. I will score 2VPs if he is Down at Stationfall. That’s what he gets for programming me to wait for an injury to fix people. I can fix them BEFORE they get injured, dangit. How about some proactive medicine, huh?

I then shuffle up the remaining Identities and deal out one to each of the Automated Opponents (you notice I didn’t say bots yet? I’m goooooood.) and we have:

Oh no! The Cyborg is a Bot! *ahem*

So the Cyborg is going to do their best to murder everyone who is an Officer (The Station Chief, Counselor and Engineer at our table), keep infected people from Escaping and setting a whole lotta fires. Lucky for me killing the Engineer actually coincides with my Grudge, but everything else is directly opposite of my goals.

The Stowaway is a weird one. First, it starts off board so we don’t even know where she begins, and her goals involve stealing data off the station and broadcasting it to the News back on Earth. She wants Evidence and information on Project X. She also has a weird ability called Secret Stash meaning whomever gets that data immediately gains a helmet (think armor) and influence, meaning they’re in on the Stowaway’s conspiracy. She’s a sneaky one. She also has a crazy ability to score 16 points if she meets all of her goals, which is kinda ridiculous. I may need to knock her out…and Revive her, but totally knock her out and anyone who is working with her.

But who else is on our cast?

Why, we have a monkey able to travel through Vents, but who is difficult to get on your side. A Counselor who is able to get through locked doors on the station and remove Influence on others.

A Daredevil who can not be robbed and who will go anywhere on the ship, but we see by those two cubes already on her card, is already under the sway of the Cyborg, and is in on his Conspiracy.

An Exile able to stop others from knocking him out, and able to get data easily (also under the sway of the Cyborg). Also have an Inspector who came in his own shuttle and can easily get Data from the ship AND from others.

Our Station Chief who doesn’t have any abilities that we haven’t seen before, but we see she is under the sway of the Stowaway, probably trying to get Evidence that THIS ISN’T HER FAULT to the people.

And finally a Troubleshooter able to Repair sections and Robots and….whatever the hell that is. They’re both working for the Stowaway, or at least influenced by her.

Hmmm…you may be asking yourself. The Stowaway has 3 Characters with Influence on them, but I only saw 2 for the Cyborg, why is that?

See? I’m useful! It would seem the Cyborg has already gotten into my programming. But you see, were this a game with humans, no one would know that I was playing Medical, so they of course would put cubes on me (and no one would start the game with cubes on them). So there’s already a bit of a monkey wrench thrown into my plans as the Cyborg is going to try and control me some turns, but I could always Reveal and send his cubes to Betrayal. BUT if I wait and try to become useful for the Stowaway, I could gain extra VP. Already I have a choice to make.

The stage is set, the station has 15 minutes before it begins to break up in atmosphere. We have our goals. What will happen?

Hell if I know.

But you should know as soon as you tune into the next installment of this Very Wordy playthrough!

Which is right here!