Not alone is a terrific one-versus-all game mixed with a bit of logic and social deduction puzzle!



In "Not Alone", all but one of the players are astronauts who have crash landed on a mysterious and dangerous planet! The lone player is the hostile alien who desires to 'absorb' the stranded humans into the planet's ecology! The human players must work together to escape the planet as the alien tries to foil their plans!



The planet is made up of a series of card locations that each have a special power and/or ability that can be activated by a player moving to the card. The players try and work out which locations to go by verbally communication and discussing their options IN FRONT of the alien player who gets to overhear everything! But, where the players ACTUALLY decide to go is done IN SECRET, by playing locations cards face down! The human players also have access to a deck of special cards (Survival Cards) that can give the players a one-off special ability or can block the actions of the alien player.



Then, the alien player tries to guess where one or more players are going and places his alien figure on a location he/see thinks will allow the alien to attack one or more players. The alien player also have a deck of special power cards (the Hunt Deck) that sometimes allow him to manipulate, or even shut down, one or more of the planet's locations on the same turn! But, of course, they are usually one-use events. So, the alien must carefully hoard his special abilities and not blow them all at once!



Victory in Not alone is a race by both sides to push their victory counter, which start at opposite ends of the point tracker board, into the center victory circle. The first side to do this wins. The alien's marker is called the 'assimilation counter'. The human tracker is called the 'rescue counter.'There is no player elimination, however.



When a player is attacked, they lose mental stamina (of which players have 3 levels-represented by cubes) and become fatigued. Whenever this happens, the alien player gets to move his point tracker one space closer to victory! Players can also choose to become fatigued (and loose a cube) to retrieve spent cards and place them back into their hand. Furthermore, once a player loses all three cubes, the alien player gets to push his tracker one space closer to the center (again), and the player gets to take back all his cubes.



This creates a great push/pull feeling with a lot of tension as both sides move closer to victory! I've never NOT had a close game with both sides one or two turns away from victory by the end of the game!



About the only flaw in the game is that it desperately need MORE cards. Replayability may suffer as the number of cards in the base game is kinda' small, and a good card-counter could probably tip the game's balance in his/her favor after 3-4 playthroughs!



Nevertheless, this game is a keeper!



Meanwhile, the human players get to push their tracker forward every time they get closer to leaving the planet! This is usually