Bad news: you’ve crashed your spaceship. The good(?) news: it should only take about 2 minutes to fix it … before you run out of oxygen.
What Is Oh No, We Crashed!?
Oh No, We Crashed! is a fast-paced cooperative game for 3 to 6 players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 2 minutes to play each session. It retails for $14.99 and is available in stores and from Hachette Board Games.
Oh No, We Crashed! was designed by Gilli Levy and Kundra Magnus and published by Edition Spielwiese, with illustrations by Anton Firsik. It’s distributed in the USA by Hachette Board Games, who provided the review copy.
Oh No, We Crashed! Components
Here’s what you get in this tiny box:
- 110 cards
- Spaceship standee
- Hitchhiker’s Handbook
The cards are small square cards. There are 8 System cards and 40 Component cards used in the tutorial, and the rest of the cards are used for subsequent planets. Each card has a very small number in the bottom corner in case you need to separate them out, and when the game first arrives there are also some divider cards throughout the deck to help you easily find the next set of cards for each planet.
The component cards have various little gizmos on them: wires and microchips and other doodads in various colors. The system cards each show three smaller versions of various gizmos matching the cards. Later cards will have some other surprises, but I won’t show too much of those to avoid spoilers.
The whole thing comes in a very small box, roughly the size (but not exactly the same shape) as two poker card tuckboxes.
How to Play Oh No, We Crashed!
You can download a copy of the rulebook here. I’ll explain how the tutorial works, and give a little information about continuing on to other planets.
The Goal
The goal of the game is to repair your spaceship within the time allotted for the scenario by repairing all the systems.
Setup
Place the spaceship in the center of the play area. Shuffle the System cards and place them face-down around the spaceship. Shuffle the component cards and spread them around face-down on the table.
Set a timer based on the player count. The more players you have, the less time. (For a 3-player tutorial game, you get a minute and a half.)
When everyone’s ready, shout “Oh no, we crashed!” and start the timer.
Gameplay
You are allowed to pick up and reveal component cards, and you can only hold one in each hand, but you can set them back down again (face-up) and reveal other cards.
Each of the System cards shows 3 components (which can include duplicates), which are required to repair it. To repair a System card, players must simultaneously place all 3 required components onto the System card. Then turn the whole stack over (so the cards are face-down). Note that since you can only hold two components at most, it always takes at least two players to repair a System.
Game End
The game ends when all of the System cards have been repaired, or the timer ends.
Flip over all of the stacks and double check that each System card is matched with the three correct component cards.
If all of the Systems were repaired correctly before the timer ended, you win! Otherwise, you lost.
Additional Planets
After playing the tutorial, you refer to the Hitchhiker’s Handbook, which includes instructions for 10 more planets that will gradually introduce the rest of the cards and new rules, plus 5 more planets that remix those cards and rules in different combinations.
I don’t want to reveal too many of the specific new cards that get added, but there are things like “dark planets” where component cards must be placed face-down if you put them back on the table, or planets where you must hold your cards backwards so only your teammates can see them. Many of the new cards get mixed in with the components, with different effects that happen when they get revealed.
Why You Should Play Oh No, We Crashed!
Since I just reviewed Vantage last week, a huge game about crash-landing on an alien planet, I figured this week I would share this tiny game about crash-landing on an alien planet. Or several different alien planets, as the case may be.
Oh No, We Crashed! reminds me a little bit of Spaceteam, the “cooperative shouting game” app that was later turned into a card game. Like Spaceteam, it’s a real-time game where people are trying to find the right matches to fix a broken spaceship, but the specific way that cards work is a little different. Part of Spaceteam‘s particular challenge was that the tools all had tech-jargon names like “Quasipaddle” and “Lorentz Whittler,” but for your malfunction card all you had was an image of it, so you had to describe it to other players so they could hand it to you—but everyone is doing this at the same time, which makes it chaotic.
In Oh No, We Crashed!, the challenge is that you can only hold two components at a time, so you have to coordinate with other players. Maybe you have two of the three items needed for a System—how quickly can you find the third, and then indicate to somebody else to pick it up? In theory, with more than 2 players, there are enough hands that the team could potentially be solving two or more Systems at a time. In practice, that’s pretty hard to keep track of, especially if you’re the person who is supposed to put your two components on two different Systems at the same time.
Further complicating things is that there are two different components in each color, so you can’t just say “I need blue!” Do you want the blue microchip or the blue … other thing? You’re not given any names for the components, so your team better come up with some nicknames pretty quickly so you can identify them. With the time pressure, it’s not uncommon for mistakes to be missed until you think you’re done, and then reveal all the stacks to find that somebody put down a pink wire instead of a pink dial.
Each planet takes about 2 minutes or less to play, so it is possible to play through the whole handbook in one sitting, even if you have to replay a couple when you don’t win. (We played the tutorial and the main 10 planets in a single session.) I like that it gives you a few tips on making your own combinations, so your team can mix and match their favorite variations.
While Oh No, We Crashed! doesn’t give you the sandbox experience of exploring an alien planet—you’re just trying to repair your spaceship so you can get out of there—it is a fun little game of frantic cooperation. It’s quick and pretty simple, but the little twists make it a nice challenge, and the small size means you can crash-land just about anywhere.
For more info, visit the Hachette Boardgames website.
Click here to see all our tabletop game reviews.
To subscribe to GeekDad’s tabletop gaming coverage, please copy this link and add it to your RSS reader.
Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
Fonte: GeekDad - Leia mais