Designed by: Alex Crispin,James Shelton,Thomas Pike
Escape the Dark Sector is a solo or co-operative game where players find themselves trapped on an impounded spaceship, and have to fight their way to freedom. It’s pretty simple, and pretty violent, but in cartoonesque fashion.
Set-up is straightforward. Randomly assign a deck of cards from the available start cards (one), the three chapters (four of each chapter) atop one of the four finale cards at the bottom: together (or solo) your challenge is to make it all the way through the deck alive. Players each take a character card, some starting kit (a weapon and an item, also in the form of cards) and play begins.
Each round is a matter of flipping the top card of the deck and resolving it. As each card represents a new section of the ship – and usually, a new threat – the short-term objective is to navigate a way past it at minimum damage. Many cards simply represent antagonists who attack, and you need to defeat them. Escape the Dark Sector has a pretty easy-to-follow combat system, involving ranged combat (from a distance) followed by close combat, with the odd special move (flanking, or a weapon that does X) thrown in. Without going into the dice system, suffice to say you deal damage, and take damage in return, until either the enemy is defeated – move on to the next card – or you are, in which case: game over! Every character’s health is tracked on a handy sheet, so you can see how close anyone is to hitting zero and manage your combat accordingly: players low on health can just take cover and sit out a round of combat to avoid taking damage.
Sometimes there’s no reward except survival, but sometimes players will stumble on additional items or weaponry. The game continues in this vein until – assuming you make it – the final card is revealed and defeated.
None from your team-mates. Plenty from the game.
Low. It's a fast-moving dice-chucker that you're either playing solo, or as a team where everyone is involved all the time.
Low. There are tactical decisions to be made, certainly, but it's a game of chance to a large degree.
Although the experience remains largely the same - roll dice, hope to escape! - there are numerous cards (more than you need for a single game) that emerge in randomized order, on top of which the dice-rolling ensures the odd narrow escape and unpleasant surprise. There are also a few different characters to play, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
1-4
Players
10+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
Escape the Dark Sector (and it's similarly-minded predecessor, Escape the Dark Castle) wears its influences proudly on its bloodied sleeve - it feels like an game (or choose your own adventure type book) from the 80's: from the theme to the objective to the drawings to the combat system. Admittedly, the gameplay is kind of limited: although players have some agency in who leads the party into each new room, and how they co-ordinate attacks (-as a solo player you play two characters) the experience is very much a dice-chucking, laser-blasting, hope-for-the-best-ing one, a kind of Indiana Jones-in-space vibe where as soon as one thing goes right another goes wrong. For me, it's not a game I want to play over and over, but I can't deny that the few plays I had were fun.