The Game Shelf Previews: Arkosa

Game: Arkosa

Publisher: Toon Hammer

Designer: Anglea Dickens

Year: 2021

 

Arkosa is a 1-4 player colony survival game in which you play the part of a colony leader on an alien planet. Fortunately you too are an alien, as are all your buddies, less fortunately there has been a great disaster, you and your handful of buddies are all locked up in an underground bunker trying to survive. That's when you get a reply to your SoS signal. A passing spaceship is coming by, in just three cycles, but they only have enough room on their ship to take one bunker's worth of people. Can you brave the dangerous wastes to scavenge enough resources to not only survive, but thrive on this wasteland of a planet, surely the visitors will take with them the most talented and ingenious people! Well, It couldn't hurt to bribe them with a few mega batteries and a good meal too! 

Thus starts a game of Arkosa, on your turn you'll be taking two actions, or passing to remove yourself from the round. There are four potential actions to do, you can trade, turning in food and air for building resources to expand your base. You can build, turning in said resources to add a new room to your bunker. You can take a bribe card, these end game cards represent potential offerings to give to your saviours, worth points should you complete them, but fail and you'll upset them with the broken promise. Lastly you can play a worker card, workers are varied and can help in several ways, often they can simply generate a few resources or morale, but most importantly they can scavenge the wastes. Whenever you do this you must pay, and then claim the reward, from a space on the board. The rewards can be anything from power crystals (needed to make your rooms function) to new crew members to join your bunker (there's only so much room, but no-one likes Dave anyway). They will also progress the exploration marker along the exploration track. Should this marker land on an item, you get a lucky find, but should it land on an event... who knows what will happen. Even worse every now and then it will reach a raid space, those are never good!

 

After every player has had their fill of actions and passed players will need to go back to base and make sure everything is functioning. People need food and air (so fussy), but will also reward you with points if their morale is high enough. Machines need to be powered and run in order to produce all kinds of wondrous effects, from resources, to happiness, to cloning your opponents workers for free labour and so on. Bases seen to, you'll return to scavenging for rounds two and three before final scoring.

Arkosa has an absolutely fantastic theme and it brings it to life both in the gameplay and the evocative art. I have to confess at first I was a little unsure of the style, but with time the unusual artistic approach really grew on me. The world is surprisingly realised with tons of different aliens with all kinds of combinations of limbs and body parts. The Arkosa universe is weird and wacky, which prevents you being dragged down by the otherwise glum theme. Besides unlike most apocalypse themed games there is still hope... well... for one bunker. The game itself is a fascinating combination of resource management and base building, with that little hint of antagonism coming up every now and then. The events can sprinkle some random luck into the game, while the raids often serve to bring the current winner down a notch. Should that not be enough then search out the right crew and you can raid your opponent's stuff. While these characters exist they a re rarely the most powerful, so out right war is not really on the cards, but a little chaos in the right place can go a long way! 

 

 

There's a lot to love between the quirky art style, fascinating creatures and tight gameplay. You'll never find yourself with abundant resources, and while not an intrinsically luck based game there's just enough to level the playing field when someone's apocalypse is going a little too well. Once you progress onto the advanced game you'll have a choice of different leaders, rooms and workers to start the game with ensuring that every playthrough has a different twist. If this seems like a game for you, then check it out on Kickstarter now!

 

Arkosa was a preview copy kindly provided by Toonhammer Games. All photos are of a prototype copy of the game. It is available exclusively on Kickstarter throughout September 2021.