There are many board games about surviving nightmarish alien encounters on distant spaceships. Heck, some of them even have an official Alien license. However, none are quite as entertaining as the co-op scifi horror board game Nemesis: Lockdown. If this tabletop title has somehow flown under your radar, now is a great time for discovery, as Nemesis: Lockdown is currently 30% off at Amazon US.
Nemesis: Lockdown takes place on a secret base on a futuristic version of Mars. Players each have a particular job role, from Xenobiologist to lowly Janitor. Like in a certain horror movie you might have seen, you're all working Joes that are unexpectedly thrown into close combat with a dangerous, rapidly multiplying alien species.
Everyone wants to survive, but that's not all there is to winning. Each player also has one of two possible secret missions. One serves the needs of the many, while the other caters to the few - often asking you to kill or betray your co-workers in the name of corporate gain.
Stop the base from burning down, survive the constant alien onslaught, and find a safe route of escape, and you might just make it out alive. No promises, though - many games of Nemesis: Lockdown end in fiery or gory death. It's a tense and thematic co-op experience that offers plenty of challenge and entertainment, even if you kick the bucket.
Lockdown is actually a standalone expansion to the original Nemesis board game, which offers an equally excellent though slightly different experience of the same core mechanics. Lockdown gives a few core mechanics some quality-of-life upgrades, though the overall game is a slight step up in complexity that might cater less to players that want a purely thematic experience.
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