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Sucking VacuumBoxed EditionList Price: $19.95
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The six-man international crew has just dimmed the lights, bid each other a multi-lingual good night, and settled back to dream of gravity on board the International Space Station... when suddenly the unthinkable happens. Sirens blare, airlocks slam shut, emergency lights flash. The crew (not an I.Q. under 120 among 'em) quickly realize that something has gone horribly wrong: The whole station is losing oxygen, and it won't be long before they're all just so much unrecoverable salvage.
The Space Station is a disaster. Equipment is strewn about after years of neglect. Nobody knows where anything is. Nobody knows what to do. And then it dawns on them: There is only ONE escape pod, but SIX crew members. It doesn't take an astrophysicist with a PhD from M.I.T. to figure out that only two of them are going home -- and the rest are going to end up Sucking Vacuum...
Sucking Vacuum is an easy to learn fast action strategy game for 3 to 6 players. Players assume the role of one of the unfortunate astronauts, searching for equipment and struggling to escape the doomed Space Station. Making their way through a randomly-assembled map of the International Space Station, players must fight off the attacks of other astronauts who are trying to escape themselves. The map, counters, dice, and everything else you need is right inside the box.
It certainly is not a bad game. Great storyline. And we have only played the basic version so far (we hope to play the Alien Incursion version soon).
So what did we think could do better?
1) Playing pieces are flimsy. Players' tokens are thin cardboards standing on plastic bases. No token could last more than 5 seconds under my slow ceiling fan! Had to play the entire game with characters lying down - very irritating as it takes up 3 spaces on the board.
2) Items to be used in basic and advanced version not differentiated clearly enough. We spent ages squinting our eyes to sort out items with 'blue' and 'green' glow.
3) Playing boards (represented by space station rooms and hallways) do not join squarely. Since you are only required to align airlock doors, rooms and hallways do not akign, making it very messy looking! Certainly not consistent with the iften symmetrical and clean lines associated with space stations. Plus, their thin stock means it moves often during play! Even more messy!
4) Confusion in number of item tokens! We are supposed to place 3 items in each room, leaving us with 2 extra, not to be revealed. We did everything according to the set-up and always ended up with 4 extra items! This could potentially make the game unplayable, for example, if all space suits end up in the 4 extra items, then no winner is possible!
5) Downtime - Even when one player has all the items required to escape in the pod (ie, helmet, suit top and pants, and disk to fuel pod), player has to wait until another player with at least the 3 parts of the suit arrives (assuming 1st player does not have auto pilot). This results in somewhat long waiting time as others are clobbering each other silly to get the required equipment.
Quality is low, concept is great, rules are unclear in several parts, ... not a bad game, but could be a lot better. Guess we will come up with some house rules and put up with the flimsy parts.
Buy with caution!
