This Game is Killer: Alien on Board review ⏤ “I admire its purity.”

While I like the name “This Game is Killer” I don’t think it’s actually doing this game any favors. It’s a cool name, but I didn’t even remember it had a subtitle until I looked at the box again. The subtitle “Alien on Board” actually tells you more about what the game is. Anyway, This Game is Killer is basically the movie Alien in a short, filler game form. If you’re familiar with the board game Nemesis, This Game is Killer shares the theme of you on a spaceship with a deadly deadly alien. I like to imagine if you literally boiled Nemesis in a big pot, you’d open that pot hours later to a box of This Game is Killer inside. So, let’s creep around and see what is around the next corner with This Game is Killer.

Overview

This Game is Killer has a simple premise, you’re on a spaceship with an… unfriendly alien. At the start of the game your goal is to kill the alien while keeping yourself alive. The game’s player count is 3-10, pretty high. With that you might think that you want to keep others alive. Nope, you just want yourself to be alive at the end of the game. Everyone else can fend for themselves.

Each round you will be dealt two cards that you must play. You will play one of the cards as an action and one of the cards as your location for that round. You choose the order in which you will play your two cards. The turn order is pretty clever and functions like a snake draft. The first player will play their card going in clockwise order, but when it reaches the last player they will play both their cards and then play reverses in counterclockwise order. Once everyone has played their cards we check what actions the crew played, simultaneously resolving them. These actions could result in dead players, sections of the ship being destroyed, or someone winning. Once those have been resolved we see where the alien is hunting by flipping over one of the ship’s location cards. If any crew are at that location, the unfortunate crew with the highest priority is killed by the alien. If all the crew died, I guess the alien wins? If not though, all cards from any destroyed location(s) are removed from the action deck with that deck then being reshuffled. From there the game moves the first player clockwise.

The last couple of rules I want to cover is that the alien will not hunt at a location it has been to previously. As location cards are revealed for the alien, they are not placed back in the location deck. If you run out though, that last location is destroyed by the alien nesting there and the location deck is reset. This gives the game an actual clock. Finally, if you are the last player alive, the action cards have additional text that will let you kill the alien. This helps even the odds for the last survivor should the game reach that point.

Pros

This Game is Killer is a game of dwindling options and chaos. It really captures the everyone for themselves panic that happens once the Not-Xenomorph from Alien has snuck aboard. Games are super snappy, lasting maybe fifteen minutes at the most. I love the turn order. If you’re early on in turn order you get to act first, but the later you go, the more information you have about what other players are doing. The action cards are a hybrid of what you will do and where you will go and this keeps your decisions short which is what the game wants.

The decisions in the game aren’t too complicated, but they are very impactful. Some players might immediately start blowing up parts of the ship on the chance they kill the alien while others will try to wait until there’s more information on where the alien will be. The action cards are all over the place in terms of effect and power. Some cards change your location, others mess with the priority rule, and a lot of them destroy a section of the ship along with any pesky aliens there. I would like to highlight one that even changes your individual win condition. If you ever play the Corporate Spy card, your win condition is now to be alone with the alien and survive that round. If you’re able to do that, you alone will win. Though, everyone else will now be gunning for you. The “Last Alive” addition to action cards allows the last player to win, letting them snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. This doesn’t come up often, but it’s an amazing drama to watch unfold when you’re already dead. Overall, This Game is Killer is full of small touches that ooze the Alien theme.

Cons

Right out of the gate this game does have player elimination, something I’m not usually a fan of. The short play time helps mitigate this. It is possible to die in the first round through no fault of your own and just be out of that game. What causes that is the high amount of “randomness” throughout the game. You just don’t know what other players are doing and can stumble into their traps, even if they’re intended for the alien. It’s also possible to draw two cards that will just kill you. “Hmm, I’m holding a card that blows up the cargo hold, and a go to the cargo hold card…neat.” While the box says the player count is 3-10, the game does best around 5-7 players. Too few and not enough chaos is happening to be interesting. Too many and the game feels like it becomes a roll of the dice. Your play group may have actual cooperation unlike mine, but I find this is a game where you have to lean into the chaos if you’re going to enjoy it.

Components

For a small box game the components are pretty nice. You get a neoprene map for the ship instead of cardboard which is just a nice inclusion. The card quality is fine, not terrible, not great. As the cards will be shuffled a lot, I would sleeve them to prevent marking. I do appreciate the cards being very readable and the rulebook helps clarify edge cases even though the rules aren’t too complicated.

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