My collection has grown vast and unwieldy with 300+ titles and as such it is difficult for me to find games that don’t already resemble something I already own. Not Alone however I think falls into that category.
Not Alone is the embodiment of films like Predator or Alien. Most of the players take on the roles of the Hunted, their ship crash landed on an alien world, their job is to repair their ship and escape before the Alien Player can hunt them all down and assimilate them. Each turn, each Hunted secretly plays down a place card numbered one to five. Then the Alien player plays out up to three tokens on the various locations, hoping to catch the Hunted. The players then reveal their place cards, if the Alien caught them he scores a point and reduces their will to resist, if he missed them they get to use the power of the place.
The various place cards allow the players to reclaim played cards, open up new areas to explore, help them discover new pieces of survival gear or fix the ship and bring them a step closer to being rescued.
At the end of the round the players discard their place card face up rather than taking it back into their hand, meaning they can’t travel there next turn, lowering the number of options they have and helping the Alien better know where to strike. The game of Cat and Mouse continues until the players escape or until the alien player has assimilated enough of the crew that the others no longer want to leave.
Not Alone is a great game. It’s a small box and a small price point from a company I haven’t really heard of before (Geek Attitude Games), but it’s a quality product. The game itself is fun, it has a deduction element, a bluffing element and a push your luck element. It scales from two to eight and plays in twenty to thirty minutes.
It offers a unique experience and it does so with some lovely art and enough diversity among turns to keep the game fresh and interesting each time you play. This one is getting a huge thumbs up from me.
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