ALIENS: ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY IN THE CORPS

We talk to Andrew Haught, the designer of Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps, about creating the game, building minis and the hazards of fighting xenomorphs in space

Can you introduce yourself please?

Hi, I am Andrew Haught. I am a game designer best known for TANKS! games and Doctor Who Time of the Daleks. I am currently a freelance game designer.

What is Aliens: Another Glorious Day In The Corps?

In short it’s a co-op survival game set in the Aliens universe. Players take on the roles of their favourite characters from the Aliens movies as they play through scenes in the movie.

Who do we get to play as? Can you give us a couple of examples of player flavour?

Basically, you can play as anyone who entered Hadley’s Hope. Each character was designed based on their character in the movie. Ripley is a survivor and her whole card is built around that concept. Gorman on the other hand is an unskilled leader, who is a liability at times, so playing his character in the game tends to indeed be a liability.

Aliens is a more bombastic source material than the first film, how did you approach this in the combat?

The second movie is more of an action movie, and the combat was filled with drama. In the game there are many rules that add increased drama to the combat. For example, the Aim Dial, having each shot increase the difficulty of the next shot adds a lot of tension to each attack.

It’s a survival game, so tell us about the threats players will be surviving? How does the game ramp up the pressure?

The number of aliens does increase as you play the game, but at the same time the number of endurance cards you have will decrease. There are even some endurance cards, the hazards, that will make this happen faster. So as a player you have to be ready to take down the Aliens but at the same time you have to manage your resources, ammo and energy, all three of which are managed by the endurance deck.

Can you elaborate on the secret movement of the Aliens themselves?

Sure, the Aliens movement in their blip form is sporadic, and can be hard to judge when they will come at you. This adds a bit of surprise to the game. At first you might be happy that you rolled 1 or 2 for the blip movement, but as you spawn more blips in that area their numbers grow, and when you eventually roll a higher number you may just find yourself overwhelmed with alien swarms. When aliens turn into models and swarms, their movement is more predictable and you can gauge when they are in attacking range and you can assess their threat more accurately.

How does the automa work for the game?

The Aliens in the game are governed by the Motion Tracker Deck. This deck has three different levels of cards, as indicated by the card backs. Each card will place Blips in the game and add a random game effect.

Once on the table the alien blips and models’ actions are governed by a set of simple rules that makes them easy

to activate. It helps that aliens in the movie have a one-track mind, get to the people and bring them back to the queen. It’s a simple monitorization and makes creating their rules easy.

Tell us about how the game works?

At its heart the game mechanics are simple, Marine turn; each character takes two actions. The Alien turn; move/attack Alien models then blips, then draw motion tracker cards to place new blips. Repeat. There is of course a lot more to it once you get into the rules.

What mechanics are you most proud of?

I am proud of the mechanics that are to my knowledge completely unique to Aliens, namely the Endurance and the Aim dials. They add something new while at the same time adding something of real value to the game.

How does the Endurance deck work?

The Endurance deck is a key part of the game and has a large part of the rules dedicated to explaining how it works in detail, but I will do my best to briefly give you a quick rundown on how it works.

The Endurance deck, apart from being a draw deck, also represents your ammo, your resources, your endurance, and your mental wellbeing. A lot of things are tied up in the deck. As you play the game you will be revealing cards, moving cards to the used pile, discarding cards, drawing cards and so on all from the Endurance deck to do various in-game actions.

How does the Endurance deck create a sense of narrative pressure for players?

The Endurance deck has loads of useful cards in it, when played right can solve a lot of the problems the players face, but drawing cards can be dangerous, holding on to too many cards will make the Endurance deck that much smaller. Also, there are Hazard cards that have to be played when revealed or drawn. There are not that many Hazzard cards in the deck, but there are enough that you worry about them every time you draw a card. On top of that you are losing Endurance cards as you go along, to in-game effects or hazards, again limiting how many you can use during the game.

What were the biggest challenges in creating the game?

The biggest challenge was in the automation of the aliens, getting them to work in a way that felt true to the movie while still creating a big enough threat to make the game challenging to the players. This has to be the most tweaked and tested aspect of the game. Everything else (save the Endurance deck) pretty much remained the same throughout testing, but the Motion Tracker deck and the rules around the aliens were constantly in flux in the early stages of the game. They were mostly ironed out about halfway through the testing process.

For fans of the Aliens film, are there any nods and winks to the players you’d like to highlight?

The game rules, and cards all are a nod to the players. There is nothing there I particularly want to call out as players readily find them and that’s half the fun of a well-designed IP game. I do want to shout out Victor Pesch. Victor did an amazing job with the graphic design on this project, there are so many references to the movie in his design it is hard to list them all, but they are there. From the pulse rifle inspired aim dials, to the dog tag experience cards, everything ties right back into the movie. These visual details are spot on and I think really bring home the theme.

Tell us about the Xenomorph design, were there any challenges in creating these minis?

As far as I was involved there were some complexities at the start with the soft plastics and one piece models we tried, they just didn’t work. It took several attempts before we got the hard plastic models we ended up with, and man, they look good. guy. It is a bit ironic as He almost didn’t make it into the game. When I first designed the game I decided to have Burke part of the story completely covered by Hazzard cards. But I was later convinced to add him and to be honest I loved designing his character, and it ended up being a really fun character to play in the game.