Playing Games – So, You’ve Been Eaten

A bit of a backlog

There are…. quite a few games on our shelves that we haven’t played yet. We are going to make a big effort to start working through them.

The Kickstarter campaign

Game design: Scott Almes
Illustration: Kwanchai Moriya

This was one of the Kickstarters that I backed, and it was almost inevitable that I would – quirky premise, humorous text, slick presentation – and of course, it was designed by Scott Almes!

I really liked this statement they made about the lack of stretch goals, and how they run a campaign:

We are aware that stretch goals would increase the funding total. However, we have already thrown everything into this game – a lot of time, effort, and money. We are already going to print with the highest quality materials.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ludicreations/so-youve-been-eaten

In my opinion, stretch goals should always be increases in quality when a campaign reaches a certain pricepoint. For example, if the funding goal of the campaign is built around 1,000 units, but the campaign does well enough that some of the materials can be improved (better card finishes, custom-printed components, etc), that’s a stretch goal I can get behind. But if you are in a position to fund a higher number of units at a much lower price, then there’s no point having stretch goals – and I love that they didn’t bother with it when it wasn’t required.

The components

Unboxing So, You’ve Been Eaten was an absolute treat. The production quality is amazing.

We backed the deluxe version, so it was a bit confusing trying to identify all the parts, because some were duplicates, and there were no instructions to assemble the dice tower – but otherwise, it was a delight to unpack and explore.

Some of the components were for the solo version only. A quirk of this game is that it can be played by ZERO players – the automaton plays on behalf of both sides.

The game

“So, You’ve Been Eaten is an asymmetric game. Players must balance short-term benefit against trying to gain an advantage for the next turns. Many times they will need to simply survive the turn. To win, they need to make clever plays and try to corner their opponent into having to make increasingly difficult choices”.

The premise of the game is that you are either a Deep Space Miner (5th class), mining for Crystals – or a Space Beast.

And the way that a Deep Space Miner (5th class) mines for these Crystals is… to be eaten.

“Should you achieve your objective and mine enough Crystals to meet your quota, it is then cost-effective for the company to activate your jetpack and extricate you from the proverbial belly of the Beast.

In the event that the Bacteria present in the Beast overwhelm you and you are digested, do not despair. Your non-organic parts will certainly be useful in the mining exploits of future Miners. In fact, you may encounter some such pieces of equipment in your expedition, remains of less-than-qualified recruits from past attempts”.

I really enjoy the deadpan silliness of the flavour text. I also like that the game is so completely asymmetrical – while the Miner is playing a dice manipulation & placement game, trying to decide which Crystals (and Tools) to gather, and avoid being killed by Bacteria, the Beast is managing and drafting cards to try and attack the Miner with Bacteria and Immune Response cards.

Neither of us completely understood the rules this first time we played, unfortunately, so we made mistakes. As the Miner, I didn’t realise that there were fewer opportunities to regain some Crystals than others, so I made the choice to give up the wrong one at the start of the game. George made similar errors with the Beast, so our game kind of evened out.

Summary

• I wasn’t quite sure if I was playing correctly; The rules were a little too loose on turn descriptions.
• there was no indication that some gems are much, much scarcer than others, so when I was forced to discard a crystal early on and discarded a green, I didn’t understand that there was only ONE other in the whole deck!
• there were no instructions for assembling the dice tower, so I winged it from the picture, and
• the dice tower doesn’t fit in the box, you have to disassemble it.

Other than those quibbles, an excellent theme, beautiful art, incredibly high-quality components.
I won 10-5 but wasn’t sure if I really did.

Would I play it again? Yes, definitely. But I think I will go over the rules again before I do!

Have you played? What did you think?