Every board game is more than just the components housed in the game’s box. Every game requires a player. This person will help bring life to these components and needs to read and understand the rules of play before beginning any game. Alien Entity is a game about the players.

Let’s back up for a moment. Imagine preparing for years for a once in a lifetime trip to the moon. You’ve had years of school, learned more about those you will travel with, and gone through more tests of endurance than you knew possible. On the day of launch everything seems a success. The ship barrels into the atmosphere, trails of smoke cover the world you once knew and grew to love, and ahead you can see the potential this new planet offers. The ship lands on the planets surface and you find things are amiss. Your partner went on his daily excursion, but when he returned he seemed… changed. Suddenly you don’t know who you can trust and you start to build a communication tower to tell those back on Earth to never visit this putrid world you are trapped on. Alien Entity is a game about this planet you’ve visited and how to best survive.

The first thing you will find about this game is it comes in an “astronaut ice cream” package. Sure, this is a decision to help profit margins and the greedy game companies, but this sets the mood perfectly, you feel transported to another world.

To start the game each player is dealt an identity card which says whether they will be a human, working to inform the rest of the team and warn them of the alien in their presence; or if they are the alien, creating turmoil and unrest and working to eliminate any opposition. Each turn of the game is simple, draw 2 cards, play 1 and then pass as many as you would like and if necessary discard down to 2 cards at the end of your turn. The cards in the deck are essentially splint into two types, human cards and alien cards. The humans are looking for guns/ammo as well as precious parts to the communication tower in order to transmit an emergency message to Earth to send help. The alien cards are infection cards, which there are 8 out of 53 total cards in the deck. The alien needs to draw these cards and then pass them to the human players, who are then working with the alien as a team in order to win together. These cards are rare though and if a human draws from the deck and happens to draw 2 infection cards, they simply discard and are not allowed to become infected naturally as the Alien MUST pass the card to the human to become infected. This makes winning as the alien especially difficult as the human team might just draw all their necessary cards, discard them as the rules force them, and leave the Alien waiting for the deck to reshuffle in order to even have a chance at winning. This is an especially unlikely scenario though.

Before diving much deeper into the game I need to address the components for a moment. The rule book is printed on a cheap printer paper, and my rule book is ripping into tri-folds but you could read the rule book once and then house-rule any problems you encounter. The cards (in the 1st edition, I cannot speak for the new 2nd edition) are horribly thin. I am not a person who usually sleeves cards, but these are thinner than a standard deck of playing cards and they take damage from shuffling and standard play especially quickly. This is a disappointment but does not make the game unplayable, they have said this is improved for the new edition. I digress.

Now to get back to the introduction, this is not a game about mechanics or game play elements, but about the players. There is a third type of card in the deck of cards the players are using. These are the “text cards.”

This is perhaps the strangest part of this game. They are never addressed in the rule book, nor are there pictures online of this entire aspect of the game. There are three of these cards, repeated three times. The first and most useful of these says “I know the alien’s identity! Watch me, the next card I pass will be to the alien!” If you have ever thought that passing notes in class was fun as you were trying to hide it from the teacher, this is your way to do it, and what a cool way to talk to a player secretly. The 2nd of these says “I am trying to build the Satellite Uplink Array! Give me some parts!” This card is less useful as you could see this from how a player is playing, if they play one of the uplink pieces, then there is no reason to pass them a card that says the same thing as the card you played. The final card says “Team up with me! Pass this card back next turn so I know we are allies!” This is the most ludicrous idea for a card text. If both players are human, then they pass the card to each other showing they are teammates, if an alien is involved, they will still pass the card to bluff that they are teammates. This card is useless as it simply clutters the good cards in the deck and says nothing in a productive way.

The text cards are the best part of the game. I just said that they are near useless. But when you introduce this game to someone new, this is the funniest moment ever in a game. As you pass these text cards back and forth saying that you are building the satellite uplink or that you are teammates. Before you’ve even had your first turn, you have 5 of these text cards, filling your hand with junk, and your turn comes around and you can’t help but laugh at the ridiculous nature of these cards and the game in general.

Each game of Alien Entity is near-silent as the cards do the talking for the group. Then the silence is broken from passing text cards back and forth and everyone simply enjoying the other’s company. This is not the best designed game, but it is an absolute riot. I do recommend this game if you are looking for a simply good time, but not for good mechanics or difficult decisions. There are good ideas inside this game, but all of the fun in this box comes not from mechanics, but from passing a card three turns in a row that says “Team up with me! Pass this card back next turn so I know we are allies!” and each player refusing the discard the card on their turn.

This game has a new shiny edition which just released last week with new artwork, which looks phenomenal, updated components, which looks to be thicker card stock, and a clarified rule book, which is another great idea. They are scrapping the current “astronaut ice cream” bag though and opting for a box, which is nicer for a gamer, but for the feel of the game I actually enjoy the current cheaper bag.

Find it in the US Amazon : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TXX17BQ/ref=cm_sw_su_dp