TABLE TOP THURSDAYS: LEVEL 7

Over Christmas E and I visited his brother and sister in law and while we were there we played LEVEL 7: ESCAPE.  I haven't really played a table top game in a while that hasn't been d20 related, Munchkin or Apples to Apples.

LEVEL 7 is as follows: "Deep underground, in the middle of nowhere, lies  Subterra Bravo – a top secret military installation filled with the unspeakable horrors of science gone wrong. Within its impenetrable depths, the masters of this fortified facility conduct gruesome experiments on innocent prisoners cruelly abducted from their otherwise ordinary lives.

You are a captive of Subterra Bravo, imprisoned in the facility’s deepest laboratory, the hall of nightmares known as LEVEL 7. Your singular goal is to escape but to do that you will have to evade the human and inhuman denizens of this subterranean labyrinth before the entire base is locked down sealing you in for the rest of your short, tormented life. Will you work together with your fellow prisoners to overcome Subterra Bravo’s endless perils or will you use them to secure your own escape? Ultimately, your chances of survival will depend on how well you manage your greatest weapon, which is also your greatest threat: Fear itself.

LEVEL 7: ESCAPE is a semi-cooperative story driven survival horror board game for 1-4 players with nerves of steel and a willingness to confront the impossible. “

When you start the same your character begins with two skills. If you are lucky those skills will give you some advantages when certain events are triggered in the game. You also begin with four adrenaline cards that represent your health and again can be played as a bonus to either lower or raise your fear. The fear scale can be very useful. In some cases you don’t want your fear to be too low as you wont have a bonus to fighting.However too much fear can attract aliens to your location and that is just as deadly.

On each of your turns you can move through tiles or vents in your quest to escape. And as you explore more tiles, more villains are laid on the table. You can choose to help the other captives escape or just make sure that you are the one who escapes. Our first game was very quick and sadly not all of us escaped as we learned the ropes. However our quick tutorial has us all racing to find the lift and onto the next level. One of the great things about the game play is that it changes depending on the level you are on and the cards you are dealt. If you play it just right you can even get the guards and the aliens to fight one another.

We played through two levels and had a lot of fun. I actually had to think ahead a few times instead of just praying that the dice were nice to me. Replay value is pretty high as there are seven levels for you to escape. Loved the artwork on the tiles, nice and creepy. In all it was kind of a blast. I don’t have a lot to compare it to so read my review and judge accordingly. If I keep this up you might even take me seriously and my geek cred may in fact go up. Anyone else play it?

4 out of 5 d20s.