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With the recent release of Alien Romulus taking the Alien franchise back to basics, and providing a fresh faced set of youths to become Alien fodder in an attempt to escape the awful world they live in, what better way to binge on Xenomorph fun than with some Alien themed board games? Lined up here are some of the finest board games you could wish to play. Just like Romulus gives a nod to, in my, and many others’, opinion, the best Alien film of all, Aliens, these games will make you nostalgic for the originals whilst creating a celebration of the new. So keep your pet cat close, get away from her you…** and prepare to enjoy the horror of a lifetime!
Alien Fate of the Nostromo by Pete Bartlam
Alien was a genre-defining film for sci-fi. Instead of a shiny cosmos full of right-stuff spacemen we got real, roughspun characters trying to do enough to keep their jobs. The Nostromo is a mining ship hauling thousands of tons of space ore. The Captain just wants to get back to Texas, Lambert struggles with self-confidence and the Engineers are in pay dispute with the Bridge. They all resent been woken up mid homeward flight to answer a rescue signal.
Oh, and there’s a top rate, gut-wrenching horror film tacked on!
Alien Fate of the Nostromo majors on the first part and skims the second. After all Ravensburger are family friendly. Alien FOTN oozes characterisation like exomorph ichor dripping through a bulkhead. The 5 key personnel: Dallas, Ripley, Parker, Brett and Lambert (Kane’s already gone and Ash is, well, different) are all represented by a splendid 40mm figurine looking like Sigourney Weaver, Harry Dean Staunton and the rest. They have their own finely illustrated player boards giving them unique abilities in this asymmetric co-operative.
They all set off across two levels of the Nostromo through the key locations: Bridge, Galley, MedBay, Hypersleep, Airlock, MU-TH-UR etc to gather stuff to complete their starting objectives and meet back in the galley to get their final mission to escape. Think Forbidden Island in space! In this they might encounter the Alien.
Here's the change. In space no-one can hear you scream but in Alien FOTN no-one screams because no-one gets hurt! Instead of dying agonisingly you just get set back a bit and lose morale. That’s not to say that Alien FOTN is not a challenge, it is a pretty tough game but not in a visceral way.
You may well scream – in frustration as you just fail to complete your mission before your morale gives out - but no-one will hear you!
Alien Legendary Encounters by Rachael Duchovny
Let’s not beat around the spaceship; Alien: Legendary Encounters is HARD! "I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies." Will you become overwhelmed by xenomorphs eager to rip you to shreds? Most definitely! Will you get a face hugger, well, in your face? More than likely! Will a chest burster kill off your character? Let’s hope not! But hard is fun, right?! This game will give you that same feeling of overwhelming dread the movie franchise does. However, just like supporting an appalling sports team, that feeling when you get a win, when your team finally beat the game… you just can’t beat it!
Legendary Encounters is a co-operative, deck building game for 1-5 players. What’s particularly nice about the Alien version is that you can choose to play any of the suggested scenarios and objectives taking you through all four original Alien movies. And if you want more replayability you can mix and match to create your own movie with mixed characters. Due to the nature of the gore, horror and violence in the Alien franchise the recommended age for this is 17+ and it can be pretty graphic, especially if you’ve seen the movies and have a good imagination, so just beware!
Coming into this game there is a lot of set up involved in sorting out the card decks and that may put some people off. But I guarantee if you persevere, you’re going to love this game. Thematically it is absolutely supurb! There are extra things you can add into the game that you may or may not like, for example if a character dies they can come back as an alien which kinda sucks for the survivors but does make it more interesting for the player who died. There is also a hidden traitor element if you use the role cards because just like the backstabbing, money hungry, looking out for number one, Wayland Corporation you could actually want your fellow crew members to
fail! I kind of think the game is hard enough already but, I don’t know, how crazy are you? You could add these elements in if you wanted to.
What better way to celebrate the new movie than to revisit the classics and this game will certainly enable you to do so.
Nemesis by Matthew Morgan
Personally, I can think of no better tribute to the Alien Franchise than the Nemesis series of board games. Each game in the now expansive series takes inspiration from the characters, ships, settings and thrilling horror that accompanies each beloved film.
Selling itself as semi-cooperative, players are given two objectives to achieve throughout the course of the game. That is until the first unwelcome visitor is discovered. From there on out, players must discard one of the objective cards and achieve the other at all costs.
But what puts the ‘semi’ in cooperative? Well, the objectives can include anything from hibernation, or discovering a planet, to sabotaging the ship or even killing the other players!
With each expansion or spinoff, new mechanics and gameplay styles are introduced to push the boundaries just a bit further. And no ideas are off the table, as the newest addition to the Nemesis family proved with an escape room style spin off!
So, if you're looking for one of the closest tabletop experiences to an Alien film there is, look no further. I explore you to dive into Nemesis today!
Aliens Another Glorious Day in the Corps by Northern Invasion Stu
I don’t think there’s a game out there that more accurately captures the theme of Aliens than Another Glorious Day in the Corps. This isn’t a high-tension, slow and terrifying horror experience along the lines of the original movie but a fast paced, high tension race for survival against the odds. The core game includes two bug hunts and four scenarios that can be linked together to form a campaign. The game’s expansions include additional missions and characters to round out the story and add depth, scale and complexity to the excellent core game.
In terms of component quality the tokens, cards and boards are robust and well presented. Gale Force 9 has done a great job of creating a game that looks, feels and plays like the film. The game is fully cooperative so can be played with friends and family or else true solo. The player characters direct the other ‘grunt’ non-player characters in the squad to complete tasks, make daring rescues and, most importantly, kill the xenomorphs.
The cards act as equipment, as a resource to carry out actions and as an in game timer - discard too many cards going full-auto and you may lose some
key equipment in future missions and you will certainly have less time to work with. This system is unlike any other I have played and fits the story perfectly as things become more desperate as the game progresses.
A final word about the miniatures. They’re great quality and look lovely. However, if you’re not wanting a game reliant upon your building and painting models before you can enjoy it, fear not. I love miniatures in games but my painting backlog is terrifying. Rather than delaying my fun, and to get the game on the table quickly, I just downloaded a pdf of character and alien tokens from the internet, printed these out and glued them to some spare bases I had lying about. While the game is phenomenal with fully painted models, it is still excellent with tokens in lieu of miniatures.
Firefly: Misbehavin’ by Sam De Smith
So fun fact: FIREFLY takes place in the Alien universe: Browncoats use WeYu tech at the Battle of Serenity. Which means I can totally talk about one of my favourite games, Firefly: Misbehavin'. It's an unusual, asymmetric game for 2-4 players combining tableau building and deckbuilding in really unusual ways.
This is a game worthy of a little patience (or indeed Patience) because honestly we didn't love it to start with. The quickstart is designed for 4 players, which is fine, but not ideal if you're playing with 2. Some of the terminology is needlessly thematic, which sounds like a weird criticism until you start arguing between Steal and Nab actions.
So, that's that out the way. Because this game is FANTASTIC. You might even say... Shiny.
What's really interesting about this game is its very asymmetry. Because each player has a different starting deck, from the outset your playstyle is radically different: Niska is aggressive where Eavestown (Badger) is all about the deal, Alliance hunts for criminals and expands whilst Serenity is all about building a crew and flying through the 'verse. It's so on-theme it's fantastic. Now I freely admit to being a fully paid up browncoat, whilst the spawn is less so, but once we got our heads round it, we were hooked! It's also much more interactive than a lot of deckbuilders, as you can directly fight one another (though it's risky), or when Reavers turn up, EVERYONE has to pitch in, or you're all dead. The fact that the common market and supply decks, along with victory conditions, change by Episode means it stays very on-brand. It also means it's extremely replayable, as well as offering very different experiences at different player counts.
Honestly, the best deckbuilder since DC. Highly recommended that you Aim to Misbehave.
So in concluding this feature, whether you just want a quick game to get you in the mood before venturing to your local movie theatre to see what all the hype is about or you fancy a weekend Alien marathon, these games are a great way to get started!
Whilst you won’t need to rewatch any of the previous Alien movies to enjoy and understand Romulus, let’s be honest, you probably want to right!?
And whilst of course there are plenty of Alien themed games out there you could opt to play these are highly recommended!
This is me, Duchovny, signing off! Game over, man! Game over.