A few games of Desolate, which is a simple solo push-your-luck game of trying to escape from a doomed moon base before you run out of oxygen. Each round you draw two face-down exploration cards, reveal one of the two, and then choose which one of those cards you will tackle – the one you know, or the one you don’t.
The game is quick, easy to play, and relatively “low-brain”, which are all qualities I appreciate at present! I have two sets of expansion content as well, but am just playing the base game for now.
(Apologies for the distractingly noisy play mat which is not relevant to this game!)
Details
Here I have 4 of the 5 orange power cells I need to escape in the shuttle, and I’ve been forced into conflict with a hostile alien. The two black dice are the alien’s health – the 4 because that’s printed on that same space of that conflict card, and the 3 because that’s printed on the alien’s card. The alien has already hit me for 2 damage (printed on the top card, just below the dice). I’ve chosen to spend 2 ammo, letting me roll 2 white dice, and my rifle scope adds +2 to my roll. If I manage to roll >= the alien’s health then it won’t hit me again, and fortunately my 1+4+2 is just enough. The alien was carrying a “small crate” which means I can have one of the two items on the back of the next Exploration card – in this case either 2 ammo or 1 oxygen (a tricky choice, as that 1 oxygen would allow me to survive a reshuffle of the exploration cards, but I’m down to 2 ammo and might not last long enough for the oxygen to matter if I don’t find more).