SPIV's Session Report

I just today completed my first session of SPIV's. It was quite an experience.

This is not a gamers game, but if you approach it as a lighthearted game perhaps as a family game, you'll have a good time.

I played in a two player game that was played over four lunchtimes at work. Now dont suppose we played for four hours, these lunchtimes, excluded time for eating and interruptions by actual work.

We actually started out very slowly as we didn't have any plain idea of what exactly you were supposed to do. We knew there was a goal of collecting money, but we literally had no idea how we earned it when we started.

Of course as a first game there was also a lot of slow turns on the first day and a not a few look ups in the rules.

By the second day, we were whizzing through. We followed the process of "move to planet-beam up alien- move to station-sell alien" once again with much reference to the rules.

By the fourth day we hardly looked at the rules at all, and when we did it was just to confirm.

We didn't count the money as we played but I had a feeling that I was behind every time my opponent landed a couple of high value aliens, and he felt likewise every time I did, which is a good feeling.

I tried buying one of the upgrades for my ship but prompty lost it when an alien drained me of my energy and therefore lost me the upgrade! That kind of soured me to upgrades from then on. However my opponent spent a lot of money and gained an upgrade that gave him extra range when he jumped, and frankly that looked useful enough that I now will consider buying it when I next play.

There were a few memorable moments, such as when after three or four turns of trying to reach a planet, I finally got there, only to have my opponent pick up an alien that swapped out locations!

Then there was the time I was constantly failing to bean up any aliens while opponent got an alien with every attempt, only to lose them all when the last one he picked up eate the others.

Those examples show the controlled chaos that goes to make up this game. Lots of die rolling, and card drawing all of which can change your situation and make you revese decisions you made last turn.

We finished the game early, because we had reached the end of the week as opposed to anyone getting the required 100,000 credits. As it turned out, it was quite a close game and I narrowly won.

We both agreed that it was a fun game, not deep, but fun and light hearted.