Noobs in Space

• Designers: Johannes Krenner, Markus Slawitscheck
• Publisher: Kosmos
• Players: 3-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 15 min per chapter x 8 chapters
• Played with review copy provided by Thames & Kosmos

Says the publisher: “You are a team of newbie astronauts sent on an actual mission in an actual spaceship in actual outer space! Exciting, right? It would be…if any of you actually knew what you were doing. Would have been nice to have at least one experienced pilot on board, but now that you’re here, you’ll just have to figure it out as you go along. In Noobs in Space, a team of two to five players must complete a series of tasks and challenges together, using what little knowledge you have. Not all hope is lost because each of you has a small part of the solution; you just need to figure out how to put it all together. While one player may know the task at hand but not have the resources to implement it, those resources may be shared among three other players. They, on the other hand, do not know what is necessary based on the information they have. Since players cannot show cards to each other, there must be a lot of clear communication and interaction by describing or reading out cards in order to gradually find out what should be done — and all of this must be done as quickly as possible. The story leads through several levels, and each level consists of several tasks, so the whole game is an action-packed event from beginning to end.”

The backstory goes as follows – In the year 2928 of the Zordon calendar, the science fiction of the past has become the reality of today: interstellar travel. Space is no longer the final frontier — its infinite vastness has come into reach. To be precise, visiting other planetary systems has become quite a trivial undertaking. It is also a thing of the past that the fleet academy was only open to the elite. Today, almost everyone who wants to can pass the training program and launch into space — even you! Until now you haven’t exactly excelled in zeal, enthusiasm, or remarkable achievements, nor did you distinguish yourselves in your exams. True to the motto: “D is passing, and passing is good. B is also good, and that’s not far from A!” So, even if you didn’t achieve perfection, you are still here, at your final exam. 

The front of the rulebook makes it clear that “this game is different from other games. You will learn how to play it step by step in the tutorial level” – which is essentially your final exam from the story.  And literally, you get almost no rules.  Essentially, pull out the tutorial set of cards and then turn over the card with the white triangle on it.  Good luck!   And, since the learning of the game is part of the game itself – for spoiler purposes – I’ll only tell you the skeleton of what happens in each game.

• Figure out what cards you need for the level and then deal them out as equally as possible – but no one can look at them yet
• Start the timer
• Now, everyone picks up their cards, and then the team works together to complete the tasks in numerical order
• When you finish the tasks, stop the timer and then check the rulebook to see how well you did.

Noobs converts app games like “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” into a tabletop game. The group must cooperatively solve task after task and work together as well as possible, because each player only knows a small part of the solution. While one player may only know the task at hand but not have the resources to implement it, those resources may be shared among three other players. Only they, on the other hand, do not even know what is actually necessary from all their information. Since the cards are not allowed to be shown to each other, there must be a lot of clear communication and interaction by describing or reading out cards in order to gradually find out what should be done. 

And all of this must be done as quickly as possible…  Well, to a degree.  In our plays so far, we haven’t really had too much time pressure.  In fact, you will take a time penalty if you don’t do a task correctly; and in some cases, we would have been better off taking even extra time to talk things through rather than going for the best overall time.  Cynically, I wonder if there is a backdoor strategy where you just do one or two tasks quickly and correctly, and then just fail on the rest; given how much time you’re allowed, you might still be able to get a good meta-game result with this.  Of course, this takes all the fun out of the game, so please don’t take my musing too seriously.

Each time you’re done with a chapter, you stop the timer to see how you did.  The instruction book will give you a diagram to show you what a successful solution looks like.  You then flip the cards over and setup the next deck.  Each card has numbers on the back which tell you which chapters you will use that specific card in.  As a checksum, the back page of the rules will tell you how many total cards should be in your deck for any particular chapter.  Trust me, you want to check and double check this as it might be impossible to solve the puzzle if you don’t have all the cards!

The modules build upon each other, and you’ll learn how different tasks work as you move through the chapters – and then in successive chapters, those tasks may get progressively more complex, though always using the same principles as the original version that you learned on.  In that sense, the game definitely teaches itself to you.  The downside is that once you have started the game, it’s hard to add other people into it midway through, as there is no repeat instructions on how to do tasks you are already supposed to know.

So, I’m not the biggest fan of communication games like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, and unsurprisingly, this game didn’t suit me either.  It is very similar in structure and feel.  The gamers that love KT&NE also liked this a lot – so that might be a better barometer for your own possible like/dislike of the game.  I gave my copy to a group who likes this sort of real time cooperative thing, and I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be a big hit with them.    I’m sure that you could replay the game (though I haven’t yet), however this version doesn’t give you the same variety that you get on the computer.  That being said, even if you know what puzzles are coming, you’ll still have to deal with the random distribution of the cards and still have to talk your way through it.  Sure, you might have an advantage, but then your goal should be best overall time and not just getting it done by the time limit.

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor