I’m unsure why I’ve never done this before, but we meet every bloody week on Thursday evenings for some multiplayer gaming — have for well over a year now, you can see the playlist here — and never once did I think that I should do a writeup of the experience. Last night we got together to play Space Food Truck, a space adventure card game, in which one to four players (four in our case) take specific rolls on a space-bourne food truck in search of ingredients and customers! Thankfully our friend Spaz was with us to explain the game, because card games aren’t usually my thing. There are four roles:
- Captain – Moves the ship
- Scientist – Researches and unlocks new cards and abilities
- Cook – Makes the food
- Engineer – Fixes the ship
Like any game of this type, it began slow because we had to have the rules and such explained to us. They’re not complicated — and the game goes out of its way to help you learn it, with embedded videos and so on — there are just a good deal of them. I like to call it complex without being complicated. While the rhythm of each turn is basically the same (action cards need power, use cards with power to do said action), each player has different cards and different actions they can do for each turn, so while the Engineer might spend their turn recharging the shields, the captain might spend their turn moving to another room to help solve a conflict. We spent a lot of time learning the game, and then once we got the hang of it, strategizing the best use of our hands. The more comfortable we got with the game, the more fun we had, I think. :)
The game has conflicts and other events pop up every time you jump, and while many of them are negative, some are positive. The whole crew has to work together to keep the ship safe from damage, while the Engineer can recharge the shields and the Captain can keep the ship fueled. The cook as the responsibility of making the needed food (which are all randomly generated at the start of the game) and the Scientist unlocks new tools for the crew to use. All of this comes together to form a very fun and cooperative experience that I had a GREAT time with. Since this can be played locally or over the Internet, I could see this being not only a fun Internet game, but a great couch coop game as well. I’ll be doing a series of me playing a local game in a month, and I’m looking forward to it. Check out the video below and check out the game as well, it’s a lot of fun. Thanks for reading/watching!
