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Survive: Space Attack
www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/177147/survive-space-attack
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- Colorcrayons
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I talked to him on BGG once through PM about the cards in the original version of the game. He never revealed details beyond being replacement effects for the effects later printed directly onto the backs of the tiles. But he did say that there were a couple handfuls that didnt make publication.
I suspect the cards here might be something based on those. or hope so anyways.
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- ThirstyMan
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That is all.
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Grudunza wrote: Geoff? Any more you can share with us about this? I'm interested as well. I'm surprised, though, that Stephen didn't call it Survive: Space Cadets.
Happy to! One of these days we'll design a game not set in space...
When Star Trek: Settlers came out, I jokingly said to Stephen Buonocore that he should come out with a space version of Survive. He laughed, but a few weeks later he came and asked us if we would be interested in seeing if we could come up with something.
But he laid out a few parameters:
1. Needed to still keep the core of Survive
2. Could have more complexity, but still needed to be a family game
3. People should want to own both - in other words, not just a straight retheme, but something new.
I thought it was an interesting challenge, and so decided to try to see if we could come up with something that met all the goals. But didn't promise anything.
Initially we (and when I say 'we' I mean me and the kids) really wanted to come up with a Star Wars vibe. The 'island' when done all in tech tiles looks amazingly like the Death Star, and our initial concept is that you were crew on the Death Star that were fleeing during a Rebel attack. Not getting the license, obviously, but sort of a parody.
We spent a lot of time on that - probably about six months - but ran into trouble. My favorite part was that we were trying to incorporate two victory conditions. It was possible for the Station to survive by manning laser turrets, or flying defense fighters. If it survived, any dudes left on the station scored points, and guys that escaped got zero (since they were cowards). If the station blew up the guys who escape score. So it broke up into factions of those trying to save the station, and those who wanted to destroy it.
However balance was tough. And more importantly the optics of flying a rebel fighter and shooting these guys floating in space felt very un-family-friendly. It had the same effect as a shark eating people, but you flying a fighter shooting at folks just felt different and wrong. Probably a topic for a GameTek some day.
So we scrapped that and went back to a more traditional 'Survive' setting, with the Station under attack by aliens. But we kept two of the new items:
FIGHTERS: These are a lot of fun. They hold a single figure (called 'Crew') and they can move as far as you want in one direction, stopping when they enter a space with Aliens you capture them. Then you can drop them into any empty space in a future turn. However you can only spend one of your three moves on a fighter. In addition to capturing aliens, fighters also make for great late-game ferries for final rescues.
LASER TURRETS: These sit on the 'Reactor' tiles (formerly Mountain tiles). If you have a Crew in the tile you can fire it for one movement point, and shoot along the hex grain to capture aliens, which, again you can place back on the board in a future turn.
TILES: We added a whole bunch of new tile abilities, most on only a single tile. Most importantly we changed the rules so that you can play as many tiles as you want, and (within limits) at any point during your turn. In the original you can only play a single tile each turn, and it must be at the start of your turn. Now there are all kinds of fun combos that you can set up, especially with the new abilities, like Teleport, which lets you swap the locations of two Crew (your or your opponents), Beacon, which lets you move empty ships to any empty space on the board, or Evolve, which lets you change Aliens from one type to another.
Plus the board is double-sided now. The back side has only two Jump Points (formerly Islands), and we include a variety of different tile setups for the start. It's amazing how changing the layout gives a very different feel to the game. 'Jacobs Ladder' has all the creatures barricaded in the center of the Station. 'Asteroids' has a series of separate four-tile asteroids, which is wide open at the start. And more.
I don't want to put my name on a box that is simply a retheme or derivative. I really wanted us to bring something different, and hopefully better, than what is an absolute classic game - one whose reputation I only want to burnish.
I think we succeeded, but time will tell.
Happy to answer any questions you guys might have.
Geoff
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Screw Stronghold Games.
That is all.
Why the screwage? bad experience? Bad customer service? Game missing pieces?
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- ThirstyMan
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The*Mad*Gamer wrote:
Screw Stronghold Games.
That is all.
Why the screwage? bad experience? Bad customer service? Game missing pieces?
I would tell you but then I'd have to kill you.
Let's just say, I'm less than impressed with some business practices of this company and leave it at that.
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A thing of beauty! Do you own the T-shirt rights?
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- ThirstyMan
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This is originally from a dormant member of the FAT community but I like it. Hopefully, it offends lots of people.
The photo has been strategically cropped because I'm chicken...
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