Space Kraken review with Jazz Paladin

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Quick Look: Space Kraken

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Designer:  Makus Geiger
Artist: U-Joe
Publisher: 3DARTLAB
Release: 2021

Player count: 1 to 4

Age: 14+

Play Time: 30-60 minutes

 

More information on BoardGameGeek.com

 

What the publisher says about it:

Space Kraken is a Rogue-like Sci-Fi Dungeon Crawler for one Solo Player; the game also comes with an asymmetric multiplayer mode for up to 4 players. Immerse within a fantastic science-fiction adventure full of strange aliens, quests, and mysteries. You will set up your crew, contend with various enemies and try to claim what you can procure, to upgrade your spaceship and equip and level up your crew. A Crypted Game Master (CGM) breathes life into the game by guiding you through various story lines that develop in parallel. It also administers secret things which are occurring. The CGM consists of scripted printed sheets (CGM SHEETS).

You can handle developments even if you are not able to see the contents of the events it prepares in secret, in a way never previously presented in a game.

You will also plan your own space flights and discover worlds which have never been discovered by any human. In space there are also risks, so you will become involved in different types of space combats as well.

This game is made for all RPG, science fiction, and tactical game fans who want to recruit their own crew to escape from Earth and discover the dark systems of the SPACE KRAKEN.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided the prototype copy of Space Kraken. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.

 

The Review

 

I first spied Space Kraken from fellow EBG reviewer Quelqunqui a few years ago.

Though it turned out to be the case that the game was not for him, the review still managed to impart a burning desire within me to try it out ; after all, it is a dungeon crawl (my favorite genre), and purported to have a lot of interesting ideas. 

So I bit the bullet and took part in the crowdfunding for the game. And while I was still waiting for my “official” copy to arrive in the mail, I was fortunate enough to be able to get a prototype rendition of Space Kraken from its creator, Markus Geiger. And after having had this preliminary edition in my hands for about a year now, all I can muster up is…

 

Wow…

Because even after all of this time, the game still presents me with a lot to digest.

Thoughts of intimidation and trepidation were easily the most abundant sensations that provoked my being as I even began just thinking about playing Space Kraken.

Sizing in at roughly 200 pages of text, the Space Kraken book is filled to the brim with content. And diving into the tome, it quickly becomes evident that this game is not for the faint-hearted. 

 

Now the premise of the game revolves around, well…a Space Kraken. Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but the story actually manages to make sense. Because this is a Role Playing Game, after all, and narrative is often the centerpiece that binds together this particular form of diversion. 

The game starts with an almost comic-book styled exposition that, although conveyed mostly by several pages of immersive text, is nevertheless abundant with rife illustrations that depict the “history” of the future earth and how you and your crew(s) came to be in their current spacey predicaments. The bottom line is that mankind is scattered into remote parts of the galaxy, and has to find its collective footing again somehow. Equipped with a spaceship and a motley crew of fellow humans, you set out on your journey through space…

And I need to pause here to describe the Space Kraken experience a bit before proceeding, because unlike many other RPGs I have reviewed, Space Kraken is the most complete, unique, and fully fleshed out RPG system short of Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, and Shadowrun, that I have yet encountered in the Tabletop scenario.

If you briefly pursue the list of games I have reviewed thus far, many of these use simplified D6 systems that focus on quick, easy solutions and group story telling. 

 

And while I have had positive things to say about some of them, I would still say that almost none (save one) of them feel like they are “all-encompassing” — fully capturing the essence of big name RPG’s.

I say that Space Kraken is not for the faint-hearted simply because it is a full-fledged RPG system, sporting none of the deficiencies of “lighter” games. Its contents feature virtually anything, and as such, the game should not be considered something to be learned and mastered in a single night. It may (as it did with me) end up taking weeks and months to build up the courage to even venture into Markus Geiger’s world. 

While a multi-player variant of the rules is available, I will be treating this primarily as a solo experience. More on this later in my critical thoughts on the game.

Note : I will not go into great detail regarding these game’s numerous facets. There are ~200 pages to summarize, and I will not be able to justify the materials contained within. Let it suffice that I will list these out and occasionally describe them a little more, noting that each of these particular facets are fully fleshed-out game sequences or features that stand alone from other game elements — each of these elements bare little resemblance to each other, and essentially, each aspect is its own unique, little beast.

Character Generation

World Generation

Storylines 

Space Flight

Space Combat

Dungeon Generation

Dungeon Exploration

Ground Combat

Character Customization / Leveling up

Weapon / Item / Ship purchasing and upgrading.

Now let me also explain that as a Dungeon Crawl, this is about as “brutal” of an experience as one can expect. Having been denoted as being a “rogue-like” experience, what this means is that you can expect to die (and reroll) characters–a lot. The game is not designed to be “beaten” in a single playthrough, nor without some degree of loss. The most recent experience I can think of in terms of a video games was Dead Cells–if you have played this, you will know right away what I mean about how the “story” will only unfold after countless deaths of your party. 

But this is not (necessarily) to Space Kraken’s detriment. 

You will use either a d20 or D6’s to randomly generate many things. Everything from new planets for visiting to multi-level dungeon layouts with bosses, obstacles, and foes galore. And while this may seem cumbersome, thankfully, things do flow well–at least, once you get over the sheer intimidation of all the things you can do.

You will fight monsters, gain weapons, treasures, and have the ability to even randomly develop some pretty crazy “prototype” weapons on your journeys. You may do all sorts of weird things, from fixing your ship’s air filtration system to potentially selling your own crewmates into slavery with space traders to save your own skin. (Yes, this sounds harsh. But, um, yeah…it is part of the game’s humor and mark of charm).

Thankfully, part of this game is scripted by a narrative “AI” of sorts–the CGM, or Crypted Game Master. This system of coded charts and events actually provides most of the backbone for the game’s structure, providing “direction” for you and your crew for lack of a better term, if we are being brief.  It is equally as cryptic as much as it is crypted, because its design is such that it keeps you from accidentally veering into spoiler content and territory.

You will continue engaging in all of the various activities noted above until you reach an end of your chosen Story Lines (chosen during character generation) or…some sort of demise.

Usually, you will have met some form of unfortunate end. Sometimes, though, you can find clever means of escaping, such as selling out your comrades (as noted above) using an escape pod, or using a teleporter to save your own bacon. But death is typically the norm.

 

Sound fun?

 

Hopefully these details don’t scare you away…

Still reading?

 

For the next sections I will talk about Space Kraken’s strengths and weaknesses. But I will also rate it in a category that I usually don’t rate games for : Innovation.

Space Kraken Innovations :

It should say something that I am allocating a portion of this review just talking about things that Space Kraken does that are… (pardon the pun) 

Out of this world.

But truth be told, the game does do things that I have never seen done before, and these do bear mentioning.

Firstly the format and game materials.

 

While Space Kraken cannot claim to be the first book-based rpg system, the method it employs as a book for creating its adventures is something that (to my knowledge) has never been done in any RPG source books and materials. Ever.

The spiral-bound book consists of a mostly standard page layout, but in all else the book breaks with tradition in terms of its design.

The pages themselves are designed with a material that is not-quite paper, but rather almost some sort of plastic / synthetic /hybrid material. What this means for practical purposes is that you can write with pencils and dry or wet-erase markers to facilitate all of the constant editing you will need to perform when tracking various stats, inventories, dungeon layouts, etc. In theory, what this means is that you may not have to utilize a lot of scrap paper at all, if you can maintain some modicum of tidiness. The pages may not rip as easily as a result (though can still be punctured by a sharp pencil if not done on a flat, hard surface, as the game manual warns, and I accidentally discovered in one instance).

What is more, many of the more essential pages have fold-out pages that can eliminate troublesome page flipping during important game events like combat. Your ship armament and configuration can have a large fold out section on the right side of the book , for example, and imposed over this section can be another set of fold outs that depict your current crew, their status, abilities, and inventories. On the left side of the book, you can have up to 4 enemies to fight, each with their own distinct fold out section from their own pages. These functionally even allow you to fight enemies of multiple types — all without even having to write up stat sheets. Just find the enemy types you need, flip them over, and you have an instant altercation.

The CGM (again, Crypted Game Master) charts also stand out as a keenly employed device. Their use, while perhaps initially confusing, allows for various in-world game happenings, multiple outcomes for choices made, reading of events, and other context-dependent outcomes that can be shaped by something you may or may not have in your possession. I know this may sound complicated (and to those whose minds may function without a particular style of reasoning and organization, it may seem doubly so), but it works. It is, as its name implies, a bit mysterious in its functioning at first, but it helps keep the mystery of the game universe intact, and largely without risk of spoiling content thanks to the way it splits apart decisions, actions, consequences as story events into a large-ish and equally well-encoded Events section of the Space Kraken manual.

It may not be apparent judging just by the pictures, but trust me, the book’s layout is a creative inspiration.

Strengths :

 

–The art and theme. Although sometimes quirky and sometimes resembling an old-school anime, I really love the aesthetics to just about everything in this book. The enemy designs may be dark and foreboding, but character art can depict both the serious and comical. Kudos to the art team for this one. I know that it may not seem the place for humor given the “serious” theme, but having a mix and range of emotions conveyed via the gorgeously-shaded artistic depictions can make your situation seem more hopeful and optimistic than it probably is. But it makes me smile often enough, while still managing to convey the urgency the story presents.

–Along the same lines, the game and its story isn’t monolithic in its presentation. It can ironically be dark and humorous at the same time, even managing to cleverly reference situations from other space-based IP’s from time to time (I am looking at you, Star Trek). The use of humor is essential to keep you wanting to move forward given how many times you will probably end up dying ; without it, even I would be hard-pressed to continue.

Achievements :

 

Potential areas of weakness :

 

—The game’s strength may ironically be its greatest weakness. The fact that this is a completely new RPG system means there is nothing like it out there, and means for a very sharp learning curve, with a lot of information.

—Whereas in many instances I would say such an achievement makes a game a “must buy”, in the case of Space Kraken I am reluctant to impart a broad seal of approval on the game for the very reason that it is just so vastly complicated. This can be either a great thing or a turn-off, depending on your mindset and proclivities. If you are adverse to complex mechanics, I would say that Space Kraken is probably not for you.

—While I do admire the material the book is made of, and how you can write in it with pencil, I do wish that there was more space in stat blocks to write in — as a lefty, my writing style is already a bit cramped, and a bit more of an area to enumerate various numbers into my character profiles would have been greatly appreciated. I do think that having a full size 8.5” x 11” sheet of paper for each crew member might not be a bad idea, even if it ends up defeating the innovation that the small fold-out sheets that Space Kraken brings to the table.

—You only know what you should have done differently with the benefit of hindsight. Know that you will die, and surmounting obstacles will depend on remembering your exact choices in the past! Which will be quite difficult to remember, given the seemingly infinite options available. This is the true “Rogue-like” experience though, so you do get what you pay for!

Final Thoughts : 

This game may suffer as a result of being way ahead of its time in some ways. Being the self-contained experience that it is, some players may be turned off by not being able to do this as easily in a group. Yes, the game has a multiplayer mechanic, but when I tried presenting it to my wife, she did not seem particularly interested due to having no connection to the ruleset — generally, the primary player of the game knows the rules extensively, while the other 3 players act as a sort of tag-along, and will not necessarily be aware of all that is going on behind the scenes. They will occasionally make decisions (that are actually intended to sabotage the 1st players efforts under certain circumstances!), but other than that, I do not feel that this will be a long-term form of entertainment for a group. This is the epitome of a solo-experience.

And Space Kraken could easily keep a solo gamer busy for over a year or more, with infinite replay ability if you happen to like the system. I will leave it up to you, the readers, to determine if this sounds like it could be your cup of tea. If so, you can find more information here on this link, https://space-kraken.de  , and also know that I have composed a special Space Kraken accompanying soundtrack (on YouTube, Spotify and more) if you want even more ambience for your session!

 

 

Thanks to Markus Geiger for blessing the world with a completely new system that bears virtually no resemblance to its RPG predecessors at all!

 

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Check out Space Kraken and 3DARTLAB on: 

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