Alien: Fate of the Nostromo
Game Information
Work together, fullfill your mission and escape the Alien.
In ALIEN: Fate of the Nostromo, players take the role of Nostromo crew members Ripley, Lambert, Parker, Brett, or Dallas. Over the course of the game, they collect scrap, craft items, and fulfill different objectives. The crew will lose and gain morale as they encounter the Alien and other situations. If crew morale reaches zero, players lose the game.
Each turn has two phases. In the Crew Action phase, players creep through the Nostromo's halls, gathering scrap, crafting items, trading scrap and items with other players, and using items and their special abilities. Brett, for example, can craft items with one fewer scrap than other players. If the Alien is within three spaces of the player with the incinerator, that player can use the incinerator to send the Alien back to its nest.
In the Encounter phase, players draw and resolve an Encounter card. The Alien could be lurking behind any corner...
Once the players fulfill their initial objectives, they face one of five final missions, each with a unique set of requirements. Players must fulfill the final mission's requirements simultaneously to win the game. Players can also introduce Science Officer Ash for a more challenging game. Ash moves through the ship, removing scrap and forcing the crew to lose morale.
Reviews and Articles About Alien: Fate of the Nostromo
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Editor reviews
A brilliant, thoughtful mass-market design that shows how much you can do with relatively little- and it’s also an amazing Alien experience.
How can you have an Alien game where characters can't be killed and instead suffer damage to a group morale?
That just seems completely wrong.
charlest wrote: After someone at BGG pointed it out, one thing that really worries me about this game is that there is no character elimination.
How can you have an Alien game where characters can't be killed and instead suffer damage to a group morale?
That just seems completely wrong.
What worried me was the guy who said he didn't want player elimination in an Alien game.
Shellhead wrote: The part that jumped out at me in the description was the emphasis on gathering scrap. It sounds like a crucial mechanic to the game, but is definitely not an element from the movies. This makes me suspect that this game was designed euro-style, mechanics first with theme applied as somewhat of an afterthought.
It's a major part of Isolation.
A lot of the movie was separating them and putting them in places they could be stalked and eliminated.
The player elimination is disappointing, there is real tension in getting killed and losing people. I guess morale isn’t the worst thing, but it isn’t great either.
Nemesis is great, but it's still ALIENS. Lifeform is my ALIEN game. Both have more rulebook checking than what I want to deal with.
Of course, Camp Grizzly is elevated quite a bit by the deck and all of the compelling events, counselors, and equipment. As well as those excellent finale cards. I'm not seeing anything which may similarly boost this design but the details are not all present.
And for the record, Sucking Vacuum is my space-panic game of choice. My will specifies that it goes to the child that cries the most at my funeral.
Intruder incorporates as many elements as possible from Alien, except that it lacks the traitor element. Instead of having players collecting scrap, the engineer characters can go to a workshop type room and spend a turn or two making either electric prods or flamethrowers. The xenomorph has a chance of growing each turn, and each new life stage includes a new power that isn't determined until the next encounter with the creature. The crew isn't allowed to kill the xeno during the first two life stages, and the medical personnel are never allowed to kill it. You can try to airlock the creature, though 2 of the 11 powers prevent that. There is a space shuttle for escape, and there is a self-destruct sequence that can be activated. The xeno is concealed by facedown tokens that can also represent escaped lab animals (like Jones the cat) or false readings on the motion detectors.
Thanks to Kickstarter, Intruder got a very fancy upgraded edition in 2013, as you can see in this Youtube video: