Your mission to Jupiter is on the brink of total failure. In case it isn’t clear – you’re in danger. HAL, the ship’s supercomputer has taken on it’s own mission – eliminate all crew members. You need a plan if you want to survive, but HAL is always listening, so be careful what you say as it will be hard to avoid. Will human or machine prove superior?

What Is It?

🥅HAL wants to shut down the Life Support system, or all 3 other systems. The crew members want to complete 3 sequences with logic cards on the HAL-9000 Core space
⚙️1 vs Many – 1 player plays as HAL, while the rest of the players are crew members. 1 crew member must always be the red crew member (Dave)
⚙️Hand Management – The game is mostly cardplay on both sides, but hand sizes may fluctuate, and both sides have ways to try and make their opponents discard cards. HAL has a few cards “in hand” that are visible to the crew members, which they can try to use to their advantage, and HAL can hear all communication between crew members, so they can not privately share info about what cards they have or need
⚙️Variable Player Powers – Each crew member has a unique ability to help them outwit HAL

Who Is It For?

👥3 to 5 Players – Nothing really changes to scale for various players. After my plays, I felt like 5 players (4 crew) was best because you have access to more cards across all your hands, and can cover more ground on the map
👥Ages 12 & Up – Gameplay is fairly light, it’s really all about effective communication, but also trying to plan around HAL’s cards (i.e. like knowing all target cards were used and won’t be back until a shuffle)
👥Fans of the movie, 1 vs many games
👥Players who can do some light card counting

PROS

🟢Aesthetics – Overall nice look
🟢Components are simple but all fine quality
🟢Theme is fun; even if you aren’t familiar with the film, it’s definitely engaging
🟢Turns are super snappy
🟢Rules are well-written and clear
🟢Quick set-up and clean-up
🟢Approachable gameplay

CONS

🔴Crew Communication – HAL hears everything. While thematic, it does make it difficult to discuss what cards they have, especially knowing that HAL has a number of cards that can force them to discard
🔴Movement needing to be the first thing a player does on their turn was hard, as it would often be beneficial to move after giving a card, for example
🔴Luck of the draw, paired with limited opportunities to trade cards can make it difficult to get those sequences of logic cards

Final Thoughts

I thought it was very difficult for the crew members to defeat HAL; it just seemed like HAL had more control overall, as well as more hidden information (unless players chose not to discuss their cards, which only makes the game harder on them). Only being able to do each action once per turn, and requiring movement at the start of the turn combined to make the game feel a little more tedious than it felt like it needed to be for the crew members. The game really seems to come down to a lot of luck of drawing the right cards at the right time, so it just doesn’t leave a lot of interesting decisions for the crew members, unfortunately.

Still, as someone not super familiar with the source material for this one, I thought the theme was rad, and the gameplay worked well with the theme as well. So if you like space/sci-fi, or the movie itself, it is worth checking out! Just keep an eye on HAL!

Additional Information:

Designer – Phil Walker-Harding
Artist – Peter Wocken
Publisher – Maestro Media
MSRP – $29.99
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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