ALIEN: Fate of the Nostromo, published by Ravensburger games, is celebrating the five year anniversary of it's release and I thought it'd be fun to share the prototyping process of the game!
I've shared what went into pitching the game to Ravensburger
here, but once the deal was signed, it was time to make a playable prototype! First thing we needed was a map of the Nostromo!
Using the blueprints of the movie's set as a guide, I started to explore layouts. I wanted to be true to the locations and how they connected as much
as a board's configuration would allow. Note that on this map is the ALIEN THREAT meter as well as the DOOM METER.
Early on, the locations had abilities that the players could use, as well as vents that the players could slowly crawl through (at a cost of two move per space). These concepts were rejected as they slowed down game play.
The "innovation" of splitting the map design into two sections was the big improvement to board's design. It allowed there to a way
for the players to get a breather if they managed to confine the alien
to the upper or lower decks.
Of
course, you need pawns to move around the map. I found these spacemen
did the trick. For the Alien, I used one from the game Horrorclix. My
kids dubbed this guy "Allen". The security guard was a stand-in for Ash.
Two versions of player character cards. The player actions were much more granular at this point, but that was abandoned. Also, Ash was considered as a playable character, but it was decided to keep him a "traitor" like in the movie, he needed to be a card-driven enemy instead.
I hand-drew the cards at first. When we discarded the individual health system for each player, I still wanted the player to experience dread. These disadvantage cards penalized the player in a variety of ways. In the end, it became too much for the players to keep track of and we discarded the concept.
Also, player had a hand of cards that they could play to perform various actions. This game play concept got pretty far into play-testing but it was ultimately discarded to streamline play.
The "Jump-Scare" deck was one of the ideas that got the game signed and creating this went through a few iterations.
The objective cards (originally called "destination cards") were fun to create. As I was already a big fan of the movie, I knew exactly what objectives, images and quotes from the movie I wanted to use as this deck would be where the player would get a large amount of the game's "flavor".
It became clear early on that players would need help remembering what the crafting costs of the items were. Since I didn't want the players to keep going back to the rulebook, these player aids were created.
The other design breakthrough came with the use of tokens. Some were items that the player could now craft anywhere (rather than having to craft in a specific location), other tokens were revealed on the map adding a moment of tension. Having the encounter deck repopulate the tokens was another improvement to the design. Note two fun tokens: the Kane token which players would have to carry and eject out of the airlock and my beautiful and highly realistic drawing of Jonesy.
Just like the movie, I wanted the game to have a big exciting finish. The final mission cards are just multi-stage objective cards, but they provided the flavor and tension that the game needed to end with a thrilling finish.
One last "easter egg" was this "bad noodle" objective card that I created as promotion to give out at conventions. If you met me at Gen-Con or BGG con in 2022, you could have got one! "Bad Noodle" is a reference to description of the movie on the bootleg Chinese DVD.
I hope you enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at the making of ALIEN: Fate of the Nostromo!
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