THE INDEPENDENT SHELF

In space, no one can hear you say yippee-ki-yay, coin-flipper. Join us as we explore these solitaire tributes to two of our favourite films

We’re being Hunted

Hunted is a new series from designer Gabe Barrett and his indie publishing studio Barrett Games. Gabe is known for his work on The Board Game Design Lab, a podcast focused on advice and growth for tabletop designers. Here, he offers us a treat in the form of two solitaire small box games set on emulating a couple of the most iconic action movies ever filmed.

Let’s start with Hunted: Kobayashi Tower. Despite not directly calling it Nakatomi Plaza, this is clearly Die Hard. It has sneaking around, a buddy cop, and even a machine gun (ho-ho-ho). The stylised artwork has a blue hue and is certainly a different style than the film, but it depicts a sleek picture of the violence and action that ensues.

The overall structure of this series works like this: you have a character and some equipment, such as a starting pistol and box of chocolates in Kobayashi Tower. Health and time are the two primary resources with you losing if either gets to zero. The purpose is entirely spatial progression. You will flip cards from a large deck into a central row. These cards include things like helpful characters, new weapons, and physical features such as doorways and hallways to advance the narrative. They also include terrorists who will halt your movement and kick up a storm.

Everything is funnelled through this process of drawing cards. When things are peaceful, you will spend icons on some cards to acquire or trigger others in the row. To move through a doorway and into the next room you will discard the grenade and a hostage for their respective movement icons. You could choose to instead toss out the hallway for its search icon and pick up the grenade for later use.

This multi-symbol system is an interesting conundrum. You must weigh decisions such as adding a hostage to your player board for a special one-time ability versus actually moving forward towards the finale. The goal is to burn through the room deck and eventually confront Lars on the rooftop, so you can’t spend too much time dawdling in a 12th story conference room pawing through rubbish.

The tension here is what it’s all about. When you flip those enemy cards you can keep going, ignoring them momentarily. However, if you reveal another threat then you immediately must fight the stronger of the two. This can be downright rough, particularly when you factor in limited ammo and a heavy toll on the time track.

That tension carries through tremendously to Hunted: Mining Colony 415. This title is of course based on the classic Aliens film, complete with a killer Queen showdown. Again, a very stylised presentation combined with the ingrained tension of that card flip mechanic really sells the setting and atmosphere.

There is one catch which will surely be a deal breaker for some. The Hunted series is incredibly random. Besides the vagaries of drawing from a large shuffled deck and relying on specific symbol assortments, combat is entirely dice based in Kobayashi Tower. There are a few ways to mitigate your results but overall lady luck can really turn the screws and dash your hopes. It can be downright gruelling as the difficulty varies wildly game to game.

Mining Colony 415 ditches the dice in favour of a clever dexterity mechanism. To attack you toss a little disk at a Xenomorph silhouette. This may turn off an altogether different group of individuals. I, however, find this mechanism satisfying and joyful. Rolling that token around on your fingertips in preparation for a key toss is thick with tension. It provides a really novel feel to the game which helps it stand out a bit in comparison to Kobayashi Tower.

Both of the Hunted releases are quirky small box titles which offer a neat emergent narrative in a solitaire experience. The limitations of these games may prove a turn-off for some, but others will eat up the atmosphere and return to a duo of beloved films.