Played some more Desolate today.
Summary
I had one game where I romped through, finding the power cells and escaping with barely a scratch. I’d again had the rifle scope (which is a particularly strong item), but I didn’t even need my second item.
In the next game I had an extra ammo clip, which enabled me to be less conservative with the number of dice I was rolling in combat; but despite this, a couple of very poor attack rolls left me extremely hurt due to heavy counter-attacks from aliens I’d failed to kill, and I was unable to sustain another hit. Unfortunately the enemy always makes the first attack, so when I inevitably found myself forced to fight before I’d located a sick bay or a medpac, I knew it was game over. I had plenty of ammo and plenty of oxygen, but unless the next conflict card was the one and only card in that deck which deals zero damage, I was done for. I drew the card. It was the zero. The alien didn’t have a ton of health, but I used extra ammo to obliterate it, and I discovered a large medpac (2 health) in its possessions. I only needed to find one more power cell to power the shuttle, but decided to stop looking for them on this level, and just focus on health and supplies, and by the end of the level I’d managed to avoid any more combat and had also found the sick bay and was back to 5 health. There was only one exploration card left on that level, so I reshuffled the discard pile to add a second card (my oxygen dropping, but still safe), and I had to decide which of the two cards to reveal – the final card of the previous level, or the first card of the next. I’d discarded several unseen cards in the process of playing safe, so the chances of the last card of the previous level being an power cell were slim, but still… I revealed that card. It was Engineering, with the final power cell I needed to escape :).
The game over, I allowed myself to flip the other card to see what it was. It was the other Engineering bay :). Usually that’s a terrible draw, as it means you’ll only get one of the two power cells for the level, and you also don’t know that you’ve missed the second; but it was a nice way to end the game in this instance :).
Some more of the game cards, this time with a more-appropriate “deep space” background:
I noticed I’d uploaded two photos with the same two items, so the second picture is the full set of items included in the base game (each game you draw 3 randomly and keep 2). The “Dark Matters” expansions add another 12 of those, along with some additional encounters, some nastier conflicts, a small deck of “afflictions” (of which there are more ways to gain one than to lose one), and a collection of optional “characters” each of whom are equipped with specific sets of items (anywhere from 2 to 4), ranked from “novice” to “veteran” as a kind of difficulty setting for the game.