#reference pear

I love bad sci-fi. Wobbly sets, wooden acting, spaceships held up with string. The Cold War rush of Ruskie paranoia flicks is one of my favourite eras of cinema history. The box art for 'Necreaux struck a chord with me. Love the cold colour scheme and the dramatic title font. The Dr himself looks like the kind of megalomaniacal villain I've seen in a dozen movies. So far so good.

The plot is suitably B-movie-esque: Necreaux has kidnapped the worlds top scientists to force them to help him build a doomsday device on his monster and trap filled island. It's up to you to traverse his lair to find the scientists, then an escape shuttle, and escape before the timer (that counts down with every turn) reaches zero and the device activates.

Oh, also, the box is tiny. Perfectly proportioned to slot into that miniscule bit of space I have left.

Anyway. Too many words. You might pretend to come here for the articles (or at least that's what you tell your other half) but really you're here for the porn.

Two decks of cards (the slipperiest, slidiest, most unholdable-est cards you'll ever encounter, by the way), some tokens and three dice. Rulebook on the left, Countdown Track (tell you in a bit) on the right.

Cards. Two decks. One encounter deck and one character deck.

Characters first then, as choosing your character attributes id the first thing you'll have to do. Your in game counterpart is made up of three randomly selected attribute cards, each with it's own advantage, skill or power.

The three cards you choose (there are many, many more than just the cards pictured) may have you play the game as a 'heroic' 'rogue' with 'precognitive' powers. The Heroic card may grant you extra strength during combat. The Rogue card here does not suffer damage when retreating from combat. Powers of precognition granted with your third card may entitle you to rifle through the encounter deck before the next turn.

These are not considered three separate characters. These are the three, randomly selected, driving forces that make up one single character.

The powers attached to each card cannot be used, however, unless the card is sufficiently 'charged'.

Charge tokens. Each turn pop one of these on each of your character cards and spend them at your leisure to activate that cards special ability.

The encounter deck is made up of five different card types: Trap, monster, event, room and item.

The Countdown Track is the ticking clock that must be advanced with every turn. If the token reaches 00:00 before both the scientists and the escape shuttle cards are discovered within the encounter deck, the game is over. You lost.

Dice. You roll these.

Right, so here's The Isle of Doctor Necreaux in play and I guess this is as good a time as any to share my feelings about my first play through.

I wasn't set on fire about it. The theme is muddled and takes it's cues from a much wider spectrum of cinema than the box suggests. On many cards I found references to B classics like Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Blob, but also references as far reaching as Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones! Not game breaking but certainly spell breaking. And 'Necreaux makes you work hard to maintain that spell; the rich theme that the box art suggests doesn't come through with the sketchy card art or the meagre back story/plot presented in the pamphlet-like rule book.

Theme aside, 'Necreaux is haaAAA-ard. It's a brutal, punishing game that feels just as unfair when you're winning as when you're losing. Mainly because it's a game almost purely of luck. Monsters, traps and events are overcome on die rolls. Very little strategy is applied through the game - just occasional (almost forced) choices like whether to use a character's Charge Token to grant a reroll after a bad fight.

I did like a couple of things: having discovered items unusable until you have earned them by defeating a monster creates a situation in which hard choices have to be made regarding which item to take and which to leave behind from a stack of discovered weapons and potions.

'Speed' also impressed me. The entire encounter deck, the whole thing, has to be dealt with before you can beat the game (the escape shuttle is the final card, see). At the start of each turn, the player must determine the 'speed' his team will travel through the deck for each turn. This is good strategy and encourages replay until a progression 'sweet spot' is found. I mean, going through the deck one card at a time makes sense because after each turn you get to rest and replenish your characters, but wait! The clock is constantly ticking and at that snails pace death will catch up with you before the end of the deck is reached. So you should set your speed to ten and turn over ten cards in this turn, but wait! Ten cards could see you fighting six monsters and unless your team is at full strength you won't make it through that turn intact.

This is The Isle of Doctor Necreaux's saving grace - that each turn is preceded with the difficult decision of how fast you want to travel through the deck based on your team's current state of health. This turned a game of sci-fi coin flipping into a tense struggle. A true test of luck and balls - Russian roulette without a revolver.

'Necreaux won't find it's way to my table often. But it does have it's size, speed of setup, play and tear down in it's favour. Ideal for when I'm short on time and feel like a no brainer, then.

As ever, I'm not sure I did the most marvelous job of breaking down this game but if you want to know more I'm always more than happy to discuss my experiences on Twitter @SonAndGames

Thanks, Reference Pear.