Cooperative Sci-Fi Strategy Game - WIP

Over the past few months I’ve been working on a cooperative action based sci-fi strategy game called The mAIden Voyage. Having play tested it myself and with friends on many occasions I’m about to take it to a few strangers at the UKGE to get some honest feedback (hopefully).

Several games have inspired The mAIden Voyage including Pandemic, Eldritch Horror and Battlestar Galactica to name but a few. I’ve tried to take the things that I love about other games and combine them into this game. These include game replayability, story/theme consistent in all parts of the game, quick reference cards making the game easy to learn (and remember!), set collection, resource management, event/encounter cards and individual roles. The art is inspired by art deco and retro travel posters (which I’ve had quite a bit of help with from a friend).

I have a few weeks before I do this so would appreciate any advice on playtesting and on my game idea in general. In addition to the images with this post, I've uploaded several images of some of the cards here if you’re interested, including quick reference cards which should give you a feel for how the game plays: www.facebook.com/themaidenvoyagebg

OVERVIEW:
The mAIden voyage is a Sci-Fi strategy game with cooperative gameplay. The game is played over 2 boards and will have a maximum of 12 rounds. The basic aim of the game is to get The mAIden to its destination, mostly intact, and with enough crew to carry out its mission.

STORY:
Space travel is commonplace in 2183, in fact there are tons of ships floating around in our galaxy, going from system to system, mostly scientific or mining, but lots of them none-the-less. However, exploring our own quadrant wasn’t enough for one group of scientists. They wanted to answer some deeper questions and had set out on a mission to once and for all prove that dark matter existed.

This group had been studying dark matter for decades but still couldn’t conclusively prove that it existed. Then, on a rather normal and boring Sunday evening, Yvette, the lead scientist, had an idea: Why didn’t they go and collect some? That way they could once and for all settle the debate as to whether it existed or not. They had recently identified what they thought was a collection of dark matter in the neighbouring sector AWGT-0608, just 12 parsecs away! But just dark matter was only half the fun. They wanted a brand new and sparkly ship to do it in. One that they had designed, a fully AI (Artificial Intelligence) controlled ship. This ship was The mAIden.

The journey was going to be long, but exciting! They couldn’t take all the supplies they needed with them, but could take enough to get them part-way there, they would need to stop at at least 2 planets on their journey to pick up additional supplies and at least 10 of the scientists would need to be tucked up in stasis until they arrived to conserve energy. Fortunately, they had had lots of data of prospective planets along their route so had plenty of choice of which ones to stop at as well as the most up-to-date stasis chambers available.

Unfortunately, not everyone was quite so enthusiastic about the mAIden’s mission. In fact, they objected to the whole idea of the existence of dark matter and weren’t too keen on an AI controlled ship either. They feared that both would result in no good and ultimately would cause the end of the human race. They just hadn’t worked out yet which would end it first – dark matter or AI.

This group called themselves Anti, so named as they were against most things scientific. They were determined to stop the mAIden’s mission, at any cost. With the ship being the first of its kind, surely it would be easy to sabotage?

Launch date came and went and the mAIden was performing exceptionally well. The scientists thought they had prevailed over Anti but little did they know that they had actually been infiltrated. There were 5 Saboteurs on board, all patiently waiting for the right moment to act.

The first of the Saboteurs had a very specific mission: damage the AI Core at the point of no return. This would wreck all kinds of havoc. The remaining 4 Saboteurs then simply had to wait and act at the right moment to guarantee that the mAIden’s mission failed.
Only moments after passing the point of no return, an explosion went off in the AI Core. A large group of scientists rushed to see what the problem was, but they were too late; 3 of the Scientists were already dead. When they tried to interface with the mAIden they discovered that the AI that the scientists had so carefully designed was damaged, it had fragmented.

In an attempt to save herself, the mAIden transferred each of her algorithms into the AI-bots. The AI-bots had previously been happily running the ship, carrying out the mAIden’s every command. But now, the AI-Bots have been set free; each has its own personality, specialism and quirks.

Unfortunately, the mAIden wasn’t able to fully transfer all of her algorithms before being irreparably damaged, her command and navigational algorithms were permanently corrupted, preventing the mAIden being able to turn around until it’s mission had been completed. This would give the Saboteurs plenty of time to prevent the mAIden and its Scientists from ever reaching its destination.

Things had gone wrong, very wrong indeed…