THE CAPTAIN IS DEAD

Cooperative games have the players working together towards a common goal -- while other events distract them and can cost them the game.  The Captain Is Dead from Alderac Entertainment Games uses this mechanic well, as 2-7 players encounter all sorts of obstacles on their spaceship while trying to win by repairing the Jump Drive.

Each player has a character, which has several traits: rank, which determines who goes first; number of actions to spend per round; often, skill discounts to use or repair the rooms aboard the ship; a hand size, for keeping skill cards, tools, and battle plans; and a special ability.  Characters roam the ship, collecting skills (Command, Engineering, Tactical, Science) from the Computers or Internal Sensors, using the Teleporter to beam from room to room (or walking when it's Offline or Destroyed), launching torpedoes at hovering alien ships, and spending lots of Engineering skills to fix the Jump Drive by one space.  The game's difficulty is based on how many spaces on the Jump Drive need to be repaired.

Unfortunately for the players, the end of each turn has an alert happening.  Yellow alerts are harmful: Systems can be knocked offline, making them inactive until repaired; aliens can board the ship, injuring any players in the room they beam into, and players can only do certain actions if injured or in the same room as aliens, and an injured player has to go to the Trauma Center to heal.  If an alien would need to be places on the ship and there are no available aliens, the players lose.  Systems can take damage, and the Shields also take 10% damage; if the Shields reach zero and then take more damage, the players lose.  Alien ships can appear on the side of your ship, doing more damage to the Shields.  And anomalies affect the whole crew until solved with several science skills.

Not surprisingly, further alerts are worse.  Orange alerts add more aliens to the invasions, do more damage to the Shields, have worse anomalies, and destroy systems so they need a lot more skills to repair.  And red alters are far more disastrous, doing everything from reducing the Shields by 50% to destroying the Jump Core, ending the game.  Players can skip an alert by spending three Command skills at the end of their turn.

The Captain Is Dead is a very fun game.  The characters are all familiar characters to anyone who enjoys science fiction, and they all have different uses in the game -- even the Janitor, who's great at repairing destroyed systems.  The more players take part, the more alerts hit them, and even at the easiest level (Coward) the game can seize defeat from the jaws of victory.  There's a nice angular feel to the artwork, and players have to balance fixing the Jump Core to win with dealing with the other assorted crises that keep popping up.  The result is very challenging and very enjoyable.

Overall grade: A-
Reviewed by James Lynch