RogerBW's Blog

Who Goes There?: first look 05 September 2018

Who Goes There? is a new heavyweight social deduction game for 3-6 players, by Anthony Coffey and Jesse Labbe.

I backed the Kickstarter last August, and it arrived in mid-August this year, two months behind the original schedule. I got the Deluxe Edition, and the box is Huge (38cm on a side), with a fair old bit of stuff in it.

Yikes. Not one I can carry to the pub meet easily. And I'm going to have a fair bit of component punchinqg to do before I can play.

The basic idea, as in the story of the same name, is for your Antarctic scientist to survive until the helicopter arrives, and then to escape on it. But rather than the usual social deduction approach of giving everyone a secret role at the start of the game, everyone starts as a human; in certain situations (if you go without food when it's time to eat; if you sleep on your own; if the camp door is broken) they'll draw Vulnerable cards, and potentially become infected. That first infected player is the Host, and can infect others, though those others cannot then cause more infection. All this happens while the usual events of Antarctic life are going on, with their own hazards.

At the end, the team leader decides who's allowed to board the helicopter. Infected players can't leave unless there's an uninfected human on board too ("in-flight catering") – but the more human players are on board, the better their chance of surviving the flight and making it to safety.

This is the same kind of "social deduction, plus other stuff going on" game as Battlestar Galactica or Dead of Winter (I own the latter, though I may get rid of it now that I have this). There are some very fine components (particularly the infection clickers, to let players show each other their infected/healthy status without letting everybody else know). There are individual role powers (the Deluxe edition has eight roles), so there's something to distinguish the various good guys from each other, but (as far as I can see so far) you don't get into a spiral of declining resources and ability to do anything to affect the game the way you can in Dead of Winter.

Looks good so far, but it'll probably have to wait until I'm gaming at home or driving somewhere before it gets played.

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime crystal cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2021 hugo 2022 hugo 2023 hugo 2024 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1