2001: A Space Odyssey

• Designer: Phil Walker-Harding
• Publisher: Maestro Media
• Players: 3-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3HvauWF
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In 2001: A Space Odyssey | The Board Game, players must fight to survive as HAL sabotages the mission to Jupiter.  One player controls the malevolent HAL, while the rest of the crew works together to outwit the AI and shut it down in a 1-vs-many format. HAL doesn’t play fair, and he’ll take multiple turns to wreak havoc on key systems. It’s up to the crewmembers, each with their own special abilities, to complete three logic sequences in the HAL Core and save the mission before it’s too late, that is, before HAL terminates any three systems or the life support goes down.

To setup the game, put the HAL player on one end of the table, and set up the HAL screen.  HAL shuffles his deck and draws 6 cards – of these, 3 of them are placed in front of the screen – they are part of HAL’s hand, but open knowledge to all.  The other players are the crewmembers, each player choosing one to play with – though the rules specify that someone must play Dave.  The Crew card deck is shuffled (mostly action cards as well as 12 numbered Logic cards)  and each player gets 2 cards to start the game.  The board has 4 main systems, and the system tile is set in the appropriate area, on the functioning side.

To start the game, HAL gets a number of turns uninterrupted to start its nefarious plans.  After these setup turns, HAL will get a turn after each crewmember takes a turn.  For each of HAL’s turns, a card from the hand is played – this could be a hidden card or one of the three face up on the table.  If a faceup card is played, a new card will be placed face up at the end of the turn.  The general options are:

• Play a Malfunction Card – place it near the matching system tile.  If there are now 4 malfunctions at a system (7 for life support), that system is terminated, and the tile is flipped over.  Crewmembers will lose some ability for the terminated system.
• Play a Door Card – place a Door Closed token over a door; crewmembers cannot traverse this door
• Play A Target Card – HAL chooses a player and names a specific card.  If said player has said card, it is revealed and discarded.
• Play a Scan Card – HAL chooses a player who then discards a card of their choice
• Lipread Card – this card does not have to be played, but rather simply be one of the three face up cards in front of HAL’s screen.  If this happens, the crewmembers are not allowed to communicate until they play a Cancel card to remove this card from play 

The crewmember turns start with the option to move. In general, you can move two spaces, though if the GRV system is terminated, you can only move one space.  After movement, you can take any/all of the following actions, in any order you like, though each can only be done once per turn:

• Give a Card – give a card to another crewmember in your space
• Repair a system – play as many repair cards that match the system in your location. For each played, remove Malfunction cards.  In general, repair cards remove one malfunction card, but certain characters have special abilities that allow for more repair
• Open Door – trash an Open Door card to remove a door token
• Cancel – play this to remove one of the three faceup HAL cards
• Recover – Look through the trash pile and choose any card to put into your hand
• Disconnect – Play 3 logic cards in sequential order. You must be in the HAL-9000 Core space to do this.  This bumps the marker on the HAL track down a space (and lowers HAL’s hand limit). If it is the third bump, HAL is defeated.
• Draw Cards – draw cards from the deck, the number of cards to be drawn is dependent on the space your standee is in.  Crewmembers have a hard limit of 6 cards in their hand at any time; 4 if the Memory module is terminated.

The crewmembers win if they are able to play 3 Disconnect sequences (and take HAL offline).  HAL wins if it can terminate any 3 systems or terminate the Life Support system.

My thoughts on the game

2001: A Space Odyssey puts you into the midst of the classic film as one player takes on the role of HAL (you know, that is just IBM rotated one letter back, right?) and the rest of the humans fight against the machine.

It looks like the game is targeted at the mass market, and the game’s complexity reflects that prospective audience.  2001 is a fairly straightforward game that should be easy for anyone to pick up.  With the assistance of the player aids, almost all the rules are at your fingertips at all times.

As the designer notes in his design diary: ” However, one sequence came to mind as the most natural section to adapt – the showdown between two astronauts and the supercomputer HAL. This sequence in some ways feels like you are watching a social deduction game play out. The astronauts have to discuss their plan for how they might outsmart HAL without him discovering it. HAL’s role is almost like that of a game master – he can see, hear, and control just about everything. So how do you beat him? And how do you do it without him knowing what you are up to? This gave me a direction and something to start with, and soon I had the concept – a one versus many game with the HAL player sitting behind a screen, playing actions to disrupt the ship while the astronauts struggle to disconnect him.”

To that end, PWH has definitely succeeded in making a design that is an interesting deduction game while keeping things thematically in line with the movie.  HAL starts out with a bit of advantage, getting to take a number of unfettered turns at the start of the game, after which there is a simple alternation between HAL and human.

The end point for the humans is really simple – get three sequences of three numbers played.  Of course, there are a number of things that make this simple task end up being not so simple to accomplish.  First, you have to draw the cards at random and then get them together in the hand of a single player.  Second, it’s hard to talk about what you’re doing because HAL can hear all your strategization – so you can’t be too explicit about the plan or else HAL will force you to discard those cards! Third, you have to make sure that you don’t paint yourself into a bad spot – it is possible to make two sequences in such a way that it is impossible to win…

Each of the humans has their own special asymmetric special ability – and the team may have to change their strategy based on which special actions are in their game.  The game scales fairly well within the 3-5 player count range; at lower counts, you have fewer abilities, but you get to use them more often.  At higher counts, you get more different things that you can do.  It’s all just a matter of timing things right to take advantage of the bonuses you have available.  

The game itself is really straightforward, and for the human team, it’s a pretty good introduction to cooperative games.  The all versus one setup also gives a nice outlet for that one guy in your group who hates playing cooperatively, and they can take on the role of HAL and play on their own.

For our group, it felt a bit on the easy side for the humans – though if that holds consistent, we could always give HAL extra turns at the beginning to turn up the heat a bit more from the start.

Will it hit the table again?  Depends who asks it.  If it’s my friend Dave, I guarantee that I’d say “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”.  For anyone else, I’d play again if asked, but I’m unlikely to ask for it.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.
• Neutral- Dale Y, John P
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3HvauWF