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In Intrepid, you are part of the team on the International Space Station, 400 kilometres above Earth. Cooperatively, you are running the station, generating life-sustaining resources. Plus, you are in the midst of a disaster that threatens your survival. Not a good day. Can you complete your missions successfully and outsmart the disaster you face?
Let’s get it right out there up front: I love Intrepid. I think it’s a great game. But there are definitely some caveats when it comes to recommending it to you. In this review, I’ll point out Intrepid’s positives and also things you need to be aware of if you’re considering buying it.
How Does It Play
Intrepid is a cooperative dice game where you will be generating resources, completing missions, and dealing with disasters. Each player is a member of a different country aboard the space station, placing dice out onto the main board to activate their tiles and generate one of the four resources, climate, nutrition, power, and oxygen. Each tile has dice requirements, for example, a value of 2-4 or a double 3. Each country is highly asymmetric with different ways that you can manipulate the dice to get the results you need.
For instance, the USA tiles let you increase or decrease the values of dice in your pool. This allows you to change your dice so you can activate more tiles and generate more resources. The USA is one of the least complex countries. Japan is the most complicated in the base game. When you initially roll your dice, you have to lock their orientation by rotating them so they are all ‘square’. From then onwards, your tiles allow you to tilt your dice in various directions but always keep them in the same orientation. This is one of my favourite countries to play. It’s very brain-burny.
In fact, the whole game is very brain-burny. To do well you need to plan. This is especially important at the higher difficulty levels. At the end of each round, you have a chance to buy new tiles, more dice, and activate special powers. To make the most of this, you need to work out how many resources you think you will generate in the next round. You then spend your capacity – the currency in this game – to ensure you will have enough resources to fulfil your missions and keep you alive.
Maths
There is a fair amount of simple maths in this process. Just addition and subtraction, but maths nonetheless. You will undoubtedly need to check your results at times, especially when things are looking tight. So, if you are maths averse, this game is probably not for you.
How Much Cooperation Is There
Cooperation is another vital component in winning this game. There are four spots in the middle that allow you to pass one of your dice to another player. In a similar vein to Spirit Island, this is a game where you ask for help. Can you pass me a 3 or a 4? What do you need? You then work out whether you can afford to pass the dice or will that mean that you are too low on resources at the end of the round which will kill you all and lose you the game.
You can’t afford to have one player happily going off and doing their own thing, generating loads of one resource. This can sometimes be useful, but in general, you want to keep your resources fairly level. The amount of capacity you get at the end of each round equals the lowest value of the four resources you currently have. Without high levels of capacity, you won’t be able to buy the more powerful tiles. You really need to work together.
Again, like Spirit Island, Intrepid is not prone to alpha gaming, the process where one player takes over in a cooperative game and tells everyone else what to do. Just running your own country will be enough for most players. You are constantly focused on the puzzle of how you can use your dice to generate the most resources. You don’t have time, or the mental bandwidth, to tell everyone else what to do. It’s not something I’ve come across anyway.
Are There Good Decisions To Be Made
You are constantly making tough, meaningful decisions in Intrepid. It is a careful balancing act. Do we start a new mission this round and lose some of our precious capacity? Does someone try to trigger a bonus by getting a certain number of resources which allows you to skip one level of a mission? Do I pass this 3 onto another player or do I risk a reroll to get the 5 or 6 I need?
This game may also not be for you if you suffer from Analysis Paralysis, where every decision you take is hard and long because there are just so many options to be considered. I don’t normally suffer from AP but there have been times when I’ve sat there looking at my tiles and looking at my dice and not having a clue where to start. In general, you have to jump in, place your first dice and then work it out.
What’s The Theme Like
For a puzzly, mechanical game, it is surprising thematic. You’ve finished a round and you’ve just managed to scrape enough resources together to keep the space station working for one more round. Then meteors hit you with a double-whammy, reducing the amount of power you can generate and also draining your power reserves. It all gets very tense as you try to work out how you’ll be able to complete your missions and keep the station running. In reality, you’ll roll some dice, but the game does give the feeling of working on a space station as a team.
Disaster
The base game has two different disasters: a meteor shower and a toxic leak. These disasters can hit hard, especially later on in the game. They add replayability to the game as you’re not sure which cards you will get that game. Plus, there are irregularity cards which change these disasters up even further.
Replayability
On the subject of replayability, this game has plenty. There are four countries to choose from and each country’s tiles are double-sided. Which side you play with depends on the resource dial you use so this gives two ways to play each country. The two sides are not vastly different but it’s still nice to have. Added to this, you have the two disasters, irregularities, and career badges which are interchangeable player powers. Yes, plenty of replayability here.
What Are The Components Like
Now on to the main issue you need to be aware of: the components. The game comes with four dials, one for each player, made from acrylic and cardboard. The cardboard on all four of mine has warped and although the game is still perfectly playable, it’s not aesthetically pleasing.
There are some minor problems with the components, such as the colour of the scenario tokens and the darkness of the flags on the tiles. Apart from that, I’m happy with the rest of the components. The dice are normal D6s but they do have a space station image instead of the usual 1 pip. It’s purely aesthetic but it’s a nice touch. The artwork is gorgeous and evocative of the theme throughout. It gives a nice feeling of being in space. The main board is possibly a tad overproduced with the acrylic trays for the tiles, but I don’t mind it.
How Hard Is Intrepid
There are four difficulty levels in Intrepid which should cater for the majority of players. It is very easy to tweak these levels to create even easier or harder levels. You’ll always be able to find a level that is the right level of challenge for you.
Conclusion
Intrepid was my top game of 2021. The component problems are an issue but I enjoy the game so much they fade into the background when I’m playing. You get a lot of game for your money and the expansion, while not essential, adds even more replayability if you enjoy the game.
Intrepid is puzzly, tense, asymmetric, mathsy (if that’s a word?), and requires a high level of cooperation. And it’s set on the International Space Station. If that sounds good to you, it’s well worth giving this game a try.
