Surviving low Earth orbit
Update: Intrepid is live on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 16 days. There is only a single pledge tier that gets you the game and the Mission Critical expansion.
Our preview post below was published on June 18.
We had posted about the 1-4 player cooperative space survival game Intrepid back in April, when it was first announced. Very little information had been made available then, and the Kickstarter launch was postponed. Now it has been planned for June 23, and we were able to find more details on how to play.
In Intrepid, you are controlling a multinational team of astronauts aboard a space station, 220 miles above Earth. A meteor shower has hit the station causing it a lot of damage. The astronauts have to work together to produce resources to sustain themselves and, at the same time, face the disaster that befell them. Each nation has its own technology to contribute, and its own complexity rating. A solo player has to control (at least) two nations, one 'A' (USA, Germany, Japan, UK) and one 'B' (Russia, Canada, Brazil, Malaysia).
Depending on the chosen difficulty, you first deal two or more Mission cards. To begin the game, each nation rolls a number of dice (number depends on their amount of resources), and then places these dice either on their own nation's Station Tiles or on the main console board. When dice are placed on the Station Tile slots, the associated action can be performed. If a slot has been disabled by a Disaster card, you cannot place dice there. If a nation needs a specific number die, they can borrow it from another nation. In this phase, you may also choose to spend dice to satisfy the requirements of a Disaster card. Any unused dice can be placed in the Habitation Module to be stored for later.
After the placement of the dice, you calculate the resources you have gained and adjust the associated markers. Then, you draw a Disaster card. Disasters may be either momentary or persistent. Momentary ones have an immediate effect and are then discarded, while persistent ones remain active throughout the game until they are resolved. Astronauts may spend their Capacity to purchase new Station Tiles or upgrade the ones they have. They may also advance their resource amount or repair a disabled tile. At the end of the round, all used dice are retrieved.
You win if you complete all the Mission cards, and lose if either the Disaster deck runs out or you cannot generate sufficient resources.