Have you ever wondered to yourself “Hey, you know what would be great? If I could live through the events of the classic 1979 movie Alien, but see if I can get my friends to die horribly in the process”? If you have, then congratulations, the board game This Game Is Killer: Alien On Board was made specifically for you!
That’s it, that’s the intro. This is a wonderfully small board game with an amazingly fast turn around time. It’s only fifteen bucks, can seat up to 10 players, has great production quality, and has made my friends laugh so loud it has turned heads when played in public.
The question this review asks isn’t going to be whether or not This Game Is Killer has the potential to be a really fun gaming experience. Instead, it’s going to be about how someone approaches the game, and whether or not it is the right gaming experience for you and your friends.
Making A Horror Classic Into A Party Game
It’s honestly a concept that’s wild and makes perfect sense: take a classic movie and turn it into a board game. People have done it plenty of times before, but I think the difference I felt after playing This Game Is Killer: Alien on Board is how minimalist it is. Most homages to already existing video games or movies try to painstakingly add as much content as possible, fitting in as many references and mechanics until the box is very large, very expensive, and the rulebook feels bloated. In comparison, this game could fit in a purse, and rules can be explained in about two minutes.
Always a fan of cards being used multiple ways. Turn one upside down to choose where to go, or use the action. Simple!
The Concept: you are all aboard a spaceship. There’s an alien killing you all. Find a way to survive the alien by removing it from the ship… and the other survivors may or may not be important to this goal.
How To Play: each player gets two cards, and plays two cards - one as an action, one as where they are hiding. Then at the end of the round, the alien has revealed where they are showing up. Chaos ensues, people die, the alien may or may not die, and parts of the ship blow up. Continue until all players are dead or victorious. That’s it! That’s pretty much the game. Rounds can be literally five minutes long, with the longest game I’ve played being about twenty thanks to teaching five brand new players at once mixed with how the alien slowly ate people one at a time.
The trick which makes this game fun is your limited options and the opportunity to be a jerk to survive. The first is how you can have multiple people hiding in say, the bridge. If the alien shows up there at the end of the round, it's the person with the higher card number who gets eaten, representing someone hiding behind a door instead of, say, deep inside a cluttered closet. This pushes you to always want to use high cards for better survivability, but you know doing it might doom another player.
They seem silly, but when you are playing high player count games, it's really fun watching all the blue turn to red over time. Also helps you keep track!
At the same time, there are ways to just avoid the threat entirely. One of my favorite action effects is ‘cold storage’, where you shove yourself into cryostasis to try and wait out the carnage. Instead of playing cards for three rounds, you have to guess where the alien goes next to emerge. If you don’t guess correctly… you freeze to death. A much more aggressive card is “Corporate Spy”, where you now actively want to find the alien, take a sample, and leave everyone else for dead.
These cards nudge you towards surviving at all costs, even screwing over your friends. You CAN try and be nice, but you really are trying to kill the alien or escape from its grasp. How much will you try and save other players, and how much will you just try and win?
Jen Just Blew Up The Engine Room And Three Friends And It’s All Very Funny
Littered in the deck are action cards that blow up parts of the ship in an attempt to kill the alien. It’s pretty straight forward in theory: you play the card, declare that the engine room at the end of the turn will be deleted, and everyone hopes the alien will show up there when its time to flip their card, and voila!
The secret sauce is when the player reveals they are blowing up the engine room that makes this game both very silly and very tense.
Here's an example of the board state probably a few rounds in: the Galley and Engine Room have removed from the game, and the alien has already been to the Med Bay. Players who are still alive would naturally try and hide in the med bay and blow up other areas until the cards needed to be shuffled again. There is a lot of luck in this game, but you can use strategy!
Let’s say Jen is the first player this round. This means she plays one card at the start of the round, everyone clockwise plays a card in order, then it comes back to her counter clockwise for her to play the last card. Now, if she puts her action card down first, she’s politely shouting “Do not go to the engine room” loud and clear to everyone around the table. But if she plays it as her last action, waiting until everyone else has declared where they are hiding and what they are doing? It’s possibly an ultimate troll move, where she’s deleting multiple other players in her attempt to stop from being eaten.
I have played games with both sort of players, and they are both great. The first style of Jen player encourages cooperation and trying (often in vain) to make sure everyone lives and that there is a trap being set. The second style of Jen promotes absolute chaos, opening up players to indulge their worst impulses of winning at all costs. I’ve definitely seen players attempt to win with corporate spy or in other weird ways just for bragging rights and laughter.
Beautiful Chaos, But Too Much Chaos For Some
This is where This Game Is Killer: Alien On Board is at its best. People diving right into the middle of a horror movie where the monster is already loose; they aren’t overthinking, just playing fast rounds to lots of laughter. Living or dying can sometimes just be luck of the draw, while other times a clever play will let you win the game in style, often at someone else’s expense.
I cannot say enough about how compact this box is. Only 6 by 7 inches, its very easy to find space for.
Now, I have played about twenty games of This Game Is Killer, and introduced the game to at least twenty five different people. If I’m being honest, reactions were mixed: some games would start off with a bang, people laughing at how they got killed off in a stupid way, and then end incredibly tense, with one lone survivor trying to dodge the alien one last time to win, only three parts of the ship left. I’ve also had games where I’ve had to explain to the table that yes, you only have two cards, and yes, sometimes that means you are screwed and can’t choose an optimal strategy, and then the game ends in the second turn with the alien being jettisoned from the ship and no one dead but the one player who got a bad first hand of options and had been complaining.
After many plays, I think it's just important to be up front that this game is for fun, and meant to be played fast. Like other games we’ve reviewed recently, This Game Is Killer works because you can be a jerk to your friend and know there is a new game starting in just a few minutes. If your gaming group wants games where you are in charge at all times and can math out the path to victory without luck getting involved, this game isn’t going to be for you. You can play flawlessly for three turns and always be helpful, and then Adam still pushes you out the airlock because the two cards he was given would have ended up with someone dead. Again, very funny, but not for everyone.
This Game Is Killer: Alien On Board
Designer: Ivan Turner
Publisher: Smirk and Dagger
Format: Board Game
Number of Players: 3-10
Play Time: 10-20 Minutes
Price: $14.99
Release Date: July 1, 2024
Review Copy: A Review Copy Was Given To The Reviewer By The Publisher.
Another key element is how this game is magic because you can play with 3-10 players with it being fun… it will just be fun in different ways. If you play with only four players, it is a much more tense experience where people can and should try to coordinate. It means when someone reveals they are going to try to abandon the ship to be the only winner feels more like a betrayal, which again, can be very fun for some groups. Meanwhile, playing with a full ship of eight or more players can sometimes feel like you are playing a Free-For-All match in a FPS like Halo. People run for the exits, playing cards so someone else gets eaten instead of them every round. Chaos reigns, and that is where This Game Is Killer truly shines.
A Phenomenal Party Game For The Right Party
I can’t overstate how much I think Smirk And Dagger have succeeded in creating this game as a product. It’s got a small neoprene mat, can be played on any sized table and can fit into nearly any sized bag. Even when I say I can’t bring games to Board Game Night, I still usually show up with it because it just lives in my work backpack without causing problems. It plays fast, can fit lots of different player counts, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It does all of this while costing just fifteen dollars.
As a party game, This Game Is Killer: Alien On Board succeeds. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, it can get some laughs and jolts of excitement. If you are looking for a centerpiece game, you are barking up the wrong tree, but if you want a game to wrap up a night of board games or kick one off with a bang, this is a great option. If you have someone you know who likes classic horror movies, double my recommendation.
One last note: while doing some last bits of research on the game, I found this thread on Board Game Geek about a player who had printed 3D tokens to help add depth to their games, and they still even fit in the original box! Credit to Bruce Hirst for this.
Speaking of classic horror, while writing this review and checking sources, I noticed that Smirk and Dagger has added a second game to this series of games. This Game Is Killer: Frozen Horror continues with many of the same elements this game has, but changes the context and theme to John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing. It adds in more social deduction, and looks to be a slightly more complicated version of this edition, which might be just what is needed to draw in more players.
If you are on the fence about this game, my advice? Give it a shot at your local gaming store or upcoming convention. Playing a sample round at PAX Unplugged sold me on the game’s promise; with the next PAX U happening in just a month, I’m hoping the next game in the series will pull me in too.
