Disclosure: The Geek Fever Games team lives within twenty minutes of my home. As a result they brought me over to a review event where I was able to play a prototype copy of the game with their team. I even got to meet the designer’s week old baby!
“Sectors all over the galaxy are disappearing, being replaced by black holes that threaten to destroy everything within! You and representatives of other spacefaring species are trying to grab everything you can get your hands (or hand-analogues) on before you get sucked into the darkness. Survive the longest, and see if you can… Avoid the Void.
Avoid the Void is a chaotic, tactical card game with an ever-changing board. Sectors will get changed, shifted, and destroyed. Your resources should be spent quickly before they get stolen or disappear. Manage your position and cards carefully, or you might be the next one to fall victim to the void!”
Avoid the Void is a competitive game that uses both a shared deck of cards and a variable board that is dealt out of its own unique circular deck. It is a very fast paced game, and if I am being honest with everyone the word “competitive” doesn’t really cut it here. This is a “gotcha” game if ever there was one.
The theme of the game is straightforward. Each player controls a ship captain that is struggling desperately to navigate a maelstrom and trying to stay out of the various black holes that are EVERYWHERE. This would seem super macabre, but Geek Fever Games has done us all a favor and made the various ship captains and the various card effects pretty absurd. For example, one of the captains is a sentient piece of cake (No. I’m not kidding).
The “gotcha” element comes from the goal of each game. You don’t have to survive a long period of time (death is largely inevitable in this one folks), you just need to survive longer than the other players. In short, Avoid the Void is the board game equivalent of tripping your friends while a hungry bear is chasing you. Players who don’t like confrontational gameplay or are uncomfortable attacking other players at the table will likely want to avoid this one. Those of you who DO like “interacting” with your fellow players will find a wide variety of ways to do so here and will likely enjoy every gleeful moment.
The game can be taught in a handful of minutes and your game group will likely be almost done with the first game by then. Essentially, layers take turns drawing the number of cards indicating on the space they are in, playing half of their cards rounded up, and then moving. If you, at any point in your turn, could not play a card, then you lose. Further, if you cannot move at the end of your turn, then you also lose. That’s it. The cards tell you how to use them and you even get to draw a power for use each turn after you die to help influence the game in some way.
It is definitely intended to be played multiple times in a row as opposed to only once. It is the kind of game that our group can play repeatedly and will never see the same board state… ever. Every aspect of the game can vary from the powers on each of the captains all the way to the layout of the board. This should keep things interesting for even the most impatient gaming groups.
I can see some gaming groups struggling with the game’s hyper-aggressive nature. But, this is the perfect game for groups that thrive on messing with each other and laughing at the chaos they sow.
Avoid the Void is on Kickstarter right now! Head on over there and give these guys your support if this sounds like a game you want to play! (We’ll have a link as soon as the campaign goes live!)
