The Ship is Falling Apart. Can You Escape? It’s a race against time with an hourglass full of broken parts.

Evacuating a starship is a common enough trope in sci-fi that it really needs no additional explanation as a game premise.

In Solar Storm, you and your fellow crewmates (I actually typed that as “cremates” on my first try, which is probably what happens when you lose) attempt to divert enough power from the doomed ship’s systems to get you all into an escape pod and launch to safety.

Mechanically, the game is akin to Forbidden Island and its ilk. You have a number of locales laid out in a randomized grid, and moving between each counts as one action. Your job is to keep enough of the systems up and running long enough to divert power from each. Meanwhile, the ship is literally falling apart around you.

On a turn, you get three actions that can be used for repairs, movement, special actions (unique to each room of the ship), salvaging parts, trading parts with other players, or you can bank actions for a future turn.

This fairly simple juggling act balances against the slowly increasing rate at which the ship is being torn apart. A fairly shallow difficulty curve in the form of how many wild cards you add to the deck gives some control over how tough this balancing act becomes.

All in all, it’s a short, satisfying game, the kind you pull out at game day while you’re waiting for everyone to arrive.