Cardboard Corner: Review of Not Alone

One of the families we play board games with recently said to me: “It's sometimes troublesome to find a game for our family. My son likes competitive games. Our daughter likes cooperative and my husband likes strategy oriented games. How to make them all happy?” I went to our shelf and picked off the game for them, Not Alone (2016). Heavy-heavy strategy? No, but definitely a barrel of monkeys in terms of mind games, guessing, double-guessing, and triple-guessing your opponent, leading to cheer-out-loud social moments.

Not Alone is an asymmetrical, one-versus-many game for two to seven players, but certainly best with four or more. The setting is an alien planet where a ship of humans has crashed landed. While the humans are crossing the planet to get to their rescue ship, an alien creature finds them and begins mind hunting. In the game, one player takes on the role of the alien. Their job is to hunt the humans and wear their minds and bodies down to the point they have been assimilated into the planet. Assimilate the humans before they get back to their ship, and the alien wins. The other players' job (the shipwrecked humans) is to get to the rescue ship. They need to work together to survive long enough. Do that, and the humans win. Competitive and cooperative, yes?

Such a game would seem to play out on a map, but such is not precisely the case with Not Alone. A card-driven game, ten location cards are laid out on the table instead at the beginning. Each human player secretly selects one of the matching location cards from their hand and sets that card face down in front of them. After all the humans have done so, the alien player places markers on the locations they think the humans will appear. The humans then reveal their cards and put their meeples on the locations. If the alien is at their location, they take damage, and if the creature has assimilated them (total three damage), the creature moves one step closer to its goal. Regardless of damage, the humans also move one step closer to their rescue ship. This repeats itself round after round until one side wins.

That is the high level view. There are a couple of details in Not Alone, however, that make the game a more nuanced affair than human whack-a-mole. Each location has a special ability which the players can activate to help them. The timing of this activation plays a key role in the decisions all players make. Everybody hopes to zig when the creature zags. Adding another layer of complexity are the alien creature's special abilities. Diversifying its move set, the special abilities force the humans to think where they will go based not only on location, but also how the creature might juke when they think it will jive. Not Alone is not a heavy strategy game, but it is in the small details—the location actions and creature special abilities—that memory, mind games, and intelligent estimation distinguish the game.

It's also where the fun is, particularly the mind games. The humans can, of course, communicate with one another while planning their moves. But loudly announcing “I'm going to the river.” is obviously not the best way for the humans to win. The alien creature will hear and put a marker there in wait. This means that humans need to be more subtle. The phase where humans select location cards is thus full of loaded looks and fun banter. “Are you going where I think you're going? <eyebrows raised>”. Escaping the creature feels great for the humans, just as catching the humans, especially two on one location, feels great for the creature. These cat-and-mouse mind games are where the game becomes a fun, shouting, high-fiving, human experience.

There are some challenges with Not Alone. The learning curve, depending on the player, can be steep, steep but short. Given it's not like a lot of other games, it takes a a couple of games to get your head around what makes it tick. The usage of the Artemis and Target tokens for the Hunter needs to be sorted out, and the Hunted have to figure out how to manager their hands effectively. The second challenge is that the game, particularly the hunter and survivor cards, can be finicky. Most are straight-foward how to be applied, but a few are only 95% clear, the last 5% potentially game changing for either side, and need hashing out. The rulebook includes a brief FAQ, but an expanded FAQ for some of the aforementioned cards would have helped.

In the end, Not Alone is why I love board games. Along with the reasons our family's friends are looking for a game, it's social, it's interactive, it's tense, it's accessible, and it has mind games. Above all, it's fun. If you are looking for 30 to 45 minutes of good times with friends and family and a colorful interactive experience that will have you shouting and groaning, try Not Alone.