Can you ever really trust your friends to not stab you in the back while escaping Antarctica?
Infection at Outpost 31 is a board game based on the cult classic remake John Carpenter’s “The Thing” centered around learning which of your friends is human and which is a terrible assimilation creature from space.
This is a game of chance and deduction, trying to figure out who is working against the group while also accomplishing objectives with random supplies.
The object of the game depends on which side you randomly end up on, human or imitation. Humans will use cards and teammates to complete missions to gain supplies and advance to a win. Imitations will use sabotage cards to hinder investigations and advance their own win by spreading contagion throughout the team.
Through these investigations, humans can continue to move through the compound and find a way to escape Antarctica through chips placed in each room. Only through defeating the thing and acquiring the correct item can you move on to the next sector, getting closer to your goal.
When enough contagion has spread, players that may have started as friends turn to foes with a random selection of who becomes an imitation
I really enjoy this game for its simple setup and premise. As a big fan of The Thing film, I think this does a pretty good job of giving the feeling of anybody being an imitation. Just because you are an imitation, doesn’t mean you want to be throwing sabotage cards out all the time. Maybe you just throw out some weaker cards, or maybe you only put in a sabotage card when your friend Jerry is on the team. Or when you are captain, you put the characters with the worst set of cards onto the expedition.
While there is no immediate threat to imitations, they can be refused to be taken on missions or later items can tie them up or incinerate their character, giving later consequences for being found out.
The only downside to this game is that it is not as fun with less people. You have less people to choose from which makes finding the initial imitation much easier and you have less choice on who should be taken on missions. If the imitation ends up being the only communications department member, they will probably be taken on every mission, making it much easier for them to win. So, get as many people as you can to come live out your Antarctic horror fantasies.
This isn’t so much a fault of the game, but a fault of the deduction board game genre, so it’s hard to hold it against the game.
The setup is not very difficult, but the instructions could be difficult for people who are not familiar with more complex games. In terms of difficulty, Outpost 31 is at a medium.
I would recommend this game to any horror fans that have a good 6-8 people who are down to play a moderately complex board game.
Pick this game up at your local game store or it can be purchased here by the publisher.
LEARN MORE:
https://theop.games/products/the-thing-infection-at-outpost-31