As a major fan of the Alien franchise this game was always going to find its way into my collection. Lifeform is a truly cinematic experience in every sense of the word and provides a tense and exhilarating game whereby the crew of a doomed mining vessel must evade a bloodthirsty alien whilst preparing their escape pod, all before the ship self-destructs. Sound familiar?
Whilst the idea itself is by no means original the experience the game creates really is. There are no dice involved and you are limited as to what you can do because of your action cards. There is even a ‘ghost signal’ mechanic so you never really know where the alien is or where it will strike next. The crew has virtually no weapons and those they do have only scare the alien off temporarily so if you get caught chances are you will be killed. However this doesn’t mean you are out of the game, you can then take over as the ship’s computer (SISTER) or even the ship’s cat!
The game currently has two expansions, Thirteenth passenger adds an asteroid attack to make matters even worse as well as a new showdown episode where the alien can follow you onto the escape shuttle and the search begins anew on a smaller map. Dragon’s domain adds in solo play for the game where you can test your mettle against the creature alone.
If you want a tense, cinematic, strategy game which follows in the footsteps of classic sci-fi horror then you can’t do any better than this.
