Grab These ‘Alien Games Before the Romulus Expansion Drops!
If you can’t get enough of the face huggers and chestbursters, these games will help you pass some time in a very creepy way.
Personally, I loved the most recent Alien movie. Romulus was exactly what I wanted it to be, tonally, in terms of seeing lots of Xenomorphs, and of course, seeing a freaky new thing as well. We recently learned that the latest addition to Alien: The Roleplaying Game will be a brand new corebook, focusing on the gear, setting, and spacecraft from Romulus. Will this include that monstrosity from the end? I equal parts home “yes” and “no.”
1. Alien RPG
If you’re excited for the new corebook, it’s probably because you know and enjoy the game already. I love this game, and GM’d a session for a family tabletop game night. My mom still hasn’t stopped talking about her character being thrown out of an airlock, but sometimes these things happen! This is one of those bleak tabletop RPGs where the game is designed to obliterate your characters and fear is a stat weaponized against you. A good GM could make one of these sessions a truly scary experience in a very fun way. And to bring it all home, the art in this book is beautifully moody and creepy.
2. The Dice
“Oh no, is this one of those games with special dice?” Yeah, sorry. It kind of is. This isn’t a truly bespoke set of dice with distinct numbers of symbols. Instead the Alien system wants you to have two colors of D6 to roll, so they made these in yellow and black. Can you use two colors of whatever D6 you have laying around your home? Sure, if you have handfuls of uniform colors. But will those D6 have face huggers on the ‘one’ so you really know when you messed up? Probably not!
3. Fate of the Nostromo
Moving from tabletop RPGs to board games, this is another game meant to merge tension and fun. Players pick different Nostromo crew members to play as and work together as they move around the ship and work together to collect supplies, evade the alien, and generally not die. Just ignore the survival rate of most of the crew, I’m sure you and your friends will be totally fine.
4. Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps
Another cooperative board game with a focus on survival. Only in this game instead of playing as a handful of mostly-normal people, you’re playing as a team of specialists and Marines. Does firepower, training, and organization make it easier to survive a xenomorph attack? I guess we’ll see. This game also has a ton of expansions, so if you enjoy playing, there’s a lot more out there.
5. This Game is Killer
This isn’t technically Alien related. But c’mon. We recognize a legally distinct Xenomorph when we see one. Unlike the other two, this game is only semi cooperative… Which is to say that you may want to defeat the alien, but taking out a few of your teammates at the same time isn’t necessarily out of the question. Whoops! This is also a party game that you’ll want to jump back into right away. Because people love being both cooperative with their friends and also very, very not.
Just so you know BoLS may collect a share of sales from the links on this page if you decide to shop from them.
