Pandemic studio announces Cryo, a board game that puts its players on thin ice
A tundra of trouble.
Cryo, the latest board game from the studio behind the Pandemic series - Z-Man Games - has players attempting to survive a disastrous mission on an alien planet.
A worker-placement game for two to four players, Cryo takes place on a frozen planet where an explorative mission has just gone terribly wrong. Players find themselves in command of a colony ship as it plummets to the surface of an icy planet. Way off course and unable to restart the engines, players will need to do whatever they can in order to survive on the desolate tundra.
Players start the game becoming leaders of their own hostile factions - with each one attempting to gather what little supplies and resources they can, whilst being sure to maintain control over the caverns nestled underneath the planet’s surface. Players will still have to brave the wastes above if they want to scavenge vital resources from the colony ship. Luckily enough, they will have access to a collection of drones which they can send out to the different sections of the ship to discover resources and even save members of their crew trapped in cryostasis.
Players will also be able to gather resources from the planet’s surface, which they’ll eventually be able to use to upgrade the engineering platforms they use to control their drones. Upgrading their engineering platforms opens up new actions for the players to perform, alongside improving any existing actions.
The upcoming board game will see players obtaining technology cards that provide three different options: upgrades, missions and vehicles. Using an upgrade card grants the player a special ability that they’ll be able to use throughout the game, whilst missions provide secret objectives that give the player’s chosen faction bonus points if they successfully complete them. Alternatively, vehicle cards offer the player ways to transport members of their faction, enabling them to spread further across the planet and gain more ground.
Eventually, players will be able to explore deeper into the planet’s caverns, which promise to provide the survivors with a safer environment for them to settle in. These different biomes will require players to fulfill certain objectives before they can claim them, with whichever player that claims their own territory before the sun sets being named the winner.
Cryo was designed by Tom Jolly - co-creator of magical duels board game Wiz-War and fantasy game Cave Troll - and Luke Laurie, who previously worked together on The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire.
Besides releasing Cryo and the Pandemic series, Z-Man Games is known for publishing tile-laying board game Carcassonne, as well as worker-placement game A Feast for Odin by Agricola designer Uwe Rosenberg.
Cryo is set to be released sometime this spring at a retail price of $59.99 (£44).