Get away from her you bitch!
Hunt or be hunted in the dark corridors of a crippled starship with your Nemesis rules summary and reference!
Awaken Realms continue to produce beautiful, intensely thematic games, and Nemesis is probably their most successful release yet, from both gameplay and production perspectives.
A while back I was bemoaning the lack of games with an Alien-like theme, but now we have an embarrassment of riches with AVP: The Hunt Begins, Lifeform, and Nemesis (and now I’ve done rules summaries for them all, I might add!) Nemesis, for me, is more James Cameron Aliens than Lifeform’s Ridley Scott Alien, because in this game, you can fight back and the aliens can die. However the tension that is so important in this sub-genre is definitely still there: not only are the alien miniatures in the game huge and horrifying, but they are drawn to you if you make too much noise. It’s a classic, creepy mechanic that gives the game a haunted house feel scattered with moments of horrific violence.
Not only will you be trying to stay quiet to survive, you’ll be closely watching your fellow players. The game is a co-op, but at the start of the game each player draws 2 objective cards, one ‘personal’ and one ‘corporate’, and must choose one as their win objective when the first alien shows up. So while you may be getting along fine when you have to fight the aliens together, you never quite know what the other players’ final agendas are. This can lead to some fantastic story moments and sudden, devastating betrayals. I’m sure that more than one Nemesis player has found themselves on the wrong side of an escape pod door just before the self-destruct marker reached the end of the track!
Production values are through the roof on this one, and everything reinforces the atmosphere of dark, sci-fi horror. Several expansions give you the opportunity to experiment with different alien types too.
Nemesis is a fantastic experience and just the kind of game I love, and I’m really glad I went ‘all in’ on the Kickstarter campaign because I think I’ll be playing and enjoying this one for a long time to come.
Keep an eye on the EOG for more coverage of Awaken Realms games in the future when Tainted Grail and Etherfields arrive!
Did have my doubts about the replay value at first but got the game in the german version….that is taking so much longer than the English one…but hopefully, it will be worth it in the end 🙂