Picture 'Alien' - many of you are probably familiar with the gut wrenching, bowel loosening terror the Xenomorphs inspire. The slow realisation that they are the hunters and you, with all your culture, civilization, technology and weapons are still a vastly outmatched prey.
This is a concept that the movies capture perfectly but has always failed (with the exception of Alien Isolation) to translate to a more interactive and playable medium.
Until now...
Nemesis will let you experience Sci-Fi survival horror in all its terror. A semi-cooperative game where your crew-mates and you must survive on a ship swarming with 'intruders'. To win the game, you will have to complete one of the two objectives dealt to you at the start of the game and get back to Earth in one piece. The 'you' is stressed, because what you need to win may be entirely different from what those around you need to achieve. So while watching your back from the various organisims hell bent on carving you into bitesized chunks, you also need to keep an eye on what those around you are up to as well.
There are many overlapping mechanics at play in Nemesis from card drafting, dice rolling, area control, resource management and huge risk and reward elements. Despite this the game is still perfectly paced and challenging without slowing under the weight of its own overlapping systems. By far my two favourite mechanics are contamination cards and the spawn bag.
Contamination cards bog down your hand and subsequently make you character slower and in certain instances they may even kill you outright. You never know if an intruder has left a nasty suprise gestating within you or if that scratch was harmless after all.
Intruders always make nasty and unwelcome appearances, when one turns up you draw a token out of the bag - this is a subtle but profound difference that Nemesis didn't need to include - but I'm so glad they did. 99% of other games would have you roll a dice to determine an outcome - which gives you a nice excuse when something bad happpens 'its not my fault, it was the dice'.The bag on the other hand always feels like it was your fault that this nightmare is now chopping the crew up into sushi. The few extra seconds anticipation as a player shakes the bag, reaches in while looking nerviously at everyone else and then groans as the Queen appears yet again sets the tone of the game perfectly.
I will say all this does not come cheap, Nemesis had a very successful Kickstarter which has now seen a published release, and as is the case with many Kickstarter games you do get a lot of plastic for your pounds - all £130 of them to be exact, that aside the minis are fantastic, the extra components are all unique and very high quality (see the noise tokens and fire tokens pictured above), its a game with huge replay opportunities and when you think you have it mastered you can flip the board over to the 'advanced' side and start the process again.
Don't let the price put you off, in my extended gaming circle 3 of us have all bought copies (one of which was the Kickstarter pledge) and we have played at least 40 games of Nemesis and it still remains a staple whenever we are all together.
If you would like to try before you buy we have a demo copy we can play in store - just message Diana to book a session in.
If this game sounds like a perfect fit for your gaming group then you can buy your copy on the website - I promise you won't regret it.
Happy Hunting
Mike
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