We’ve seen all the movies: 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Geostorm, Wall-E or series like Blue Gender or The 100. The world is or will be ending shortly, and the last bastions of humanity will do whatever it takes to survive. Whether it’s relocating to more habitable locations, building giant arks or even fleeing into space and other places among the stars, ultimately humanity tries their best to adapt and prevail.
What if you were the political leaders charged with building these arks or rockets into space? Can you secure your seat in time while also not be eliminated by your enemies? Find out in Breaking Games’ We’re Doomed: the Game of Global Panic.
The Game
We’re Doomed is a tabletop game where the world is ending, the players are the political leaders trying to build the rocket ship and escape in a limited time. If it’s starting to sound like our imminent future, I assure (and pray) to you, it’s not (yet).
Players can assume the role of political leaders representing different types of governments. Classics like autocracy, democracy, socialism, and communism go head to head against theology, corporatocracy, and others. The players can either work together to build the rocket and secure their ability to board the ship, but the players only have 15 minutes to do it!
Contribute, Influence, and Events
Each player, during their turn, can perform several actions (depending on your choice of government, you will receive a discount for it) that either has a cost or has an immediate gain of resources. In this game, the two primary resources are Resources and Influence, which are represented as tokens.
Resources can be used to help construct the seats for your escape ship. A handy chart is available for players to determine the number of Resources needed to create enough seats. Granted, the most essential objective is to build at least one seat (and make sure you’ve secured a spot for yourself). This creates an excellent environment for cooperation, a competitive edge, and coercion between players. The tokens are kept hidden behind your government card. During the Contribution phase, players can contribute any number of Resources to the rocket ship, with the highest bidder gaining access to the first player token for the next round. Influence is necessary for some actions but most importantly, securing your seat on the rocket. Players enter the ship in the order of most Influence to least.
The Event Cards in this game are, for me, the best moments. The game doesn’t take itself seriously and has some hilarious event cards that are either read silently or read aloud for everyone to hear. Some of the effects are absolutely counterproductive, and then others are just plain hilarious.
Final Impressions
We’re Doomed is a fantastic game for any playgroup, even better as another social party game. The quick gameplay time also helps keep players focused and simply adds to the tension. I received a review copy during Gen Con and between my 4-player and 6-player games, the broader group dynamics add a lot more hilarity from the event cards. You can see the development of bartering and social contracts similar to games like Coup but a dash of Cards Against Humanity thrown into the mix.
In our 4-player game, we ended up with not enough resources in the project, and as a result, we all lost. That was a great feeling for our players, and we had a great big laugh out of it. In our 6-player game, having two Autocracy leaders helped establish a literal cold war atmosphere as Democracy and Theology continued to manipulate the board, there were a lot more vindictive plays and that just added to the humor and experience.
You can snag your copy of We’re Doomed by Breaking Games for $35 USD.
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