The best cooperative board game!

No question, Vlaada Chvatil is in my eyes currently the most innovative game designer par excellence - whether "Galaxy Trucker", "Through the Ages" or present here "Space Alert", his plays are characterized by great ideas, highly original mechanisms and clever design ... and have an absolutely perfect price / performance ratio. I am now convinced that you will get from it and Czech Games still a lot of first-class material!

I was really curious, would like a cooperative game look of an author who puts so much emphasis on innovation - and was not disappointed! Cooperative games are currently new trend without question, and while many of them quite similar mechanisms have, ("Shadows over Camelot" was highly visible example for "Battlestar Galactica" Godfather) go SPACE ALERT another way.
Here is not only a pile of cards the enemy, but also a harsh time limit via CD, what this game is a completely separate note.

Basically SPACE ALERT plays as follows: players embody a spaceship crew, which must be exactly 10 minutes to defend their ship. Within this 10-minute dive permanent new enemies and dangers which must keep the players in chess - and it almost always only through coordinated actions. The players act in such a way that they play action cards for each round - at the end of the 10 minutes, this card will be evaluated. To put it plainly: within the utter chaos and under strongest pressure of time the players have with their card hands develop sensible solutions - and this is only possible through collusion and sometimes hard decisions.

The time and the dangers are predefined in this case a CD: So ultimately running the game from a soundtrack, always new threats or other events will be announced through the real-time. What at first sounds a bit awkward, however, should be absolutely no problem feasible in most cases - it is enough already a cell phone or a small MP3 player my PC boxes if times really should not be a CD player in handle range. While it is possible to play the game without a CD / MP3 player within reach, but this certainly is a lot of flair lost.

This brings me to the most crucial advantage of SPACE ALERT: flair and atmosphere. Because this is in fact absolutely gorgeous!
The ongoing CD with ever new computer announcements and countdown the game creates an almost tangible atmosphere that reminded of the final scenes from films like "Alien". Appropriate lighting creates the doubt authentic Nostromo atmosphere in the living room!
At the same time, this design fits just fantastic for SF-theme of the game ... because our group of longtime role players is a real plus.

Playful comes this CD-based game Space Alert also be good: the timeout simply creates an environment through cooperation really is a challenge! A minor problem many cooperative games is so that the players who are all pulling together, can be a very long time, auszuknobeln the optimal train. Not so here: you need simple, just as Captain of the ship, a lot of "Coolness Under Fire" to counter the dangers sense. Easy to drift off everything in complete chaos, so the crew must really keep the nerves in order to optimally solve a scenario.
As I said, somehow is cooperation by the real challenge!

Commendable alongside the innovative and atmospheric gameplay you have even components (made plentiful and good!) And call the great and funny written rulebooks. As I said, equipment and price-performance are more than exemplary.

Criticism I can install in Space Alert only in rather fundamental nature: cooperative games are certainly not for everyone - and we tend to prefer clear games with conflicts, but certainly appreciate times change. So who can do anything with cooperative games need SPACE ALERT not be taken into consideration, because it not traitors, etc. there is even more cooperative than other similar games.

In addition, one may certainly say that SPACE ALERT like any other cooperative game probably wear out over time - but as I said, this problem is in the co-operative genre simply inevitable at some point ... you know hold the cards, the problems or the CD in- and heart, and also the best co-operative play, no human opponent as easy to replace.
Nevertheless, this problem is simply inherent in the system in this genre. Sometime is unquestionably the air out.

All in all, for me without question, the best cooperative game - and certainly the one with the most stress and the most hectic.

Simply great!