Kickstart This! #238: Intrepid


Designers:  Jeff Beck (Getaway Driver, Hardback, World Domination), Jeff Krause (Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers, Sabotage)

Artist: Gwalchmai Doran

Publisher:  Uproarious Games (Getaway Driver, The Grand Carnival, World Domination)

Genre/Mechanisms: cooperative game, dice rolling, events, scenario/mission/campaign game, space exploration, tile placement, variable player powers

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Intrepid is already fully-funded. Pledges currently total more than 8x the initial funding goal with 3 days left to go on the campaign!

Player Count: 1-4

Solo Mode:  yes

Complexity: heavy

Risk: medium-high

What It’s About: “A game about surviving 220 miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station. Players are astronauts from a variety of nations, bringing their unique technologies to bear. A highly asymmetric cooperative game with a variety of nations and disaster scenarios, each which play completely differently, so every game will be completely unique.”

How It Works:  “Players must work together to satisfy a number of emergency repair cards before the station is destroyed or the players fail to generate enough resources. Intrepid is played over a number of rounds, with each round comprised of the following phases: Roll and Place Dice, Count Resources, Flip a Disaster Card, Spend Capacity, and Reset the Round.”

“During the Roll and Place Dice phase, players simultaneously roll the number of dice indicated by the white resource token on the dice track, and then simultaneously assign their dice to their own nation’s station tiles and/or the center console board.” Because Intrepid is a cooperative game, both of these actions happen simultaneously, and players are encouraged to communicate and coordinate their choices with each other.

After players collectively Count Resources, they then Flip a Disaster Card, resulting either in a one-time event or a persistent effect, and then evaluate the result. If there are ever no cards left during this round, the game ends and the players immediately lose.

Players may then choose to Spend Capacity to acquire select items. Capacity is something managed by each player individually, so purchases must be made individually. Unspent capacity carries over from round to round.

Finally, players “reset each red resource token to the bottom left-most space on the drain wheel of each resource mat. Resources do not carry over, so players must generate resources anew each round. Any added drain, however, does carry over, making each round just a little more challenging.”

“Play continues from round to round until players win by completing each of the emergency repair cards in play, or lose when the station is destroyed or the players fail to generate enough resources.”

Comparisons: Richard Ham (aka Rahdo) said of Intrepid “Unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.” Yet at its heart, Intrepid is still a game where players are working together to gather resources and fulfill a series of goals, and so in a very superficial sense, it has much in common with other cooperative games. A few cooperative games that feature a campaign/scenario structure include The 7th Continent, Chronicles of Crime, The City of Kings, The Crew: The Quest for Planet 9, Gloomhaven, The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth, Mansions of Madness, Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, and Zombicide. Cooperative games the include Events players must resolve together include Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck-Building Game and Sylvion.

What Should I Pledge?:
$60 You Are Intrepid: a copy of the Intrepid core game, the Intrepid: Mission Critical Expansion, and all unlocked stretch goals.

Add-Ons:
A 12-month exclusive character with a price TBA in the Pledge Manager.

KS Exclusives
The new character to be revealed in the Pledge Manager will be a KS-Exclusive for 1 year after shipping.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S., you’re looking at $60 for the You Are Intrepid pledge, whatever the price is for the additional character in the Pledge Manager, plus $6 in shipping for a total of $66+.

Intrepid completes its Kickstarter on Thursday, July 9th and tentatively ships in March 2021.

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