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Alien Overrun - Looking For Testers & Feedback

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Wed, 11/18/2015 - 17:21
MarkJindra
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The year is 2084 and you are a member of an elite repair unit operating on the edge of known space. Whenever major mining equipment breaks down your team gets the call. Your mission: repair the damaged power core and clear the base of any alien presence.

90-120min -- 1-4 players -- Age 12+

So I have a game that is pretty far along. It has been tested but could always use a little more. As we prepare to release a free print-and-play and put together copies for playtest groups we thought it might be a good idea to post a link to the game and get some feedback. Also feel free to pop by our facebook page and message us if your interested in receiving a basic playtest copy (we are looking to send out 10-15 of them). I am looking forward to your feedback.

Rules

Youtube

Facebook

Thanks a bunch

Mark Jindra (Overrun Studios)

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Thu, 11/19/2015 - 05:51
#1
I Will Never Gr...
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Looking good! I've taken a

Looking good! I've taken a quick look at the rules and I think there can be a bit done with them, but I'd need more time to sit with it than I have at the moment.

Otherwise, I've liked the facebook page and look forward to seeing more!

So .. many .. components!

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Thu, 11/19/2015 - 12:36
#2
MarkJindra
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components

The rules are probably about 60% of the way to where I would like them. They started as a bullet point list and I have started to make that more human readable along the way but the organization of things may be a bit haphazard due to the rules changes after each playtest session.

Yea there are a ton of components. I can keep the total cost to make the game below $20 (via china) but that usually means 4 to 6 times that for retail. It is meant to be a medium to medium-heavy game and takes about 90 minutes to two hours to play.

Thanks =)

M

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Thu, 11/19/2015 - 16:52
#3
DarkDream
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Interesting . . .

I glanced at the rules and looked at the video.

The basic engine seems to me to move to a sector, explore it, battle potential aliens, gain resources and upgrade.

So it seems to me that the goal is to kill the alien queen within a certain time period.

So really it is a race against time where you build up your rigs and then attack.

I have not looked at all the encounter cards, but maybe an idea is that some of the aliens cause havoc by trying to slow down rigs besides just fighting. Maybe going ahead and repairing the bulk heads, blocking movement to a sector, creating a fire that needs to be extinguished so the rigs don't keep gaining damage, causing a hole in the space station where a rig gets blown out and needs to start at the highest level and so on.

Point is to create tension by essentially putting obstacles in the way of the rigs to waste time.

Right now there seems one large story arc of defeating the queen. Have you thought of placing smaller story arcs in there.

For example, the rigs must destroy a pod of sleeping aliens waking up in order to avoid being overrun. An asteroid hits one of the levels causing a severe pressure problem which must be fixed within a certain time otherwise all rigs begin taking damage? How about if an alien immobilizes a rig, they bring it to a certain place and it needs to be rescued?

In other words, have little sub-missions in the game.

Some other thoughts have to do with making the role modules of the rigs different enough so it forces players to use their rigs to create synergy so as to be more effective and thus promote more team work.

I obviously have not played the game, but as a cooperative game, I hope their is a strong cooperative element there instead of players basically interacting independently.

Has the play testing showed that players strategize together?

--DarkDream

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Thu, 11/19/2015 - 17:17
#4
MarkJindra
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Thanks for the feedback

You pretty much have it down. You explore and look for resources and kill aliens to accumulate equipment and alien artifacts that all let you become stronger so you can progress deeper and kill stronger aliens in route to the Queen. The cards add and move aliens and act to delay the rigs. It's a race against time with obstacles in your way.

Testing has shown that players on their first play of the game start by doing their own thing for a about five or 6 turns then as more and more aliens are placed they realize that they need to strategize more and by the end of the game all of them are paying attention and engaged in each players turn. If someone who has played the game is introduced to a game with new players they usually seem to let the other players know that strategizing together is important.

The choices you make during the game such as where to place a turret for the engineer role. Or when to use a charge to add another dice to the combat for a rig that is facing overwhelming amounts of aliens is also important.

I love the "sub-mission" idea. We have sub missions that are revealed when the queen is first encountered. However there is a built in mechanic with the combination of two decks where the second deck is only drawn from 6 times leading up to the fight with the queen then each attack against the queen draws from the deck. This deck has cards that are more complicated to defeat than the base deck. So we could surely introduce the sub-missions in that deck. I will certainly take that idea to my co designer and see what his thoughts are.

The game takes place across 84 turns. The deck looses cards each time through so it acts as the timing mechanism. There are 26 cards and 2 are set aside each time through so you don't know what cards exactly are in the deck. So 24, 20, 16, 12, 8, 4 when the deck runs out that last time the game ends and the players lose if the queen isn't defeated.

Thanks a bunch for that feedback

M

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