Clank! In Space

The most famous movie tagline in history states ‘In space, no one can hear you scream’. Movie makers have long since filled the silent vacuum of space with noise - the lush soundscapes of Interstellar, the whipped hum of a lightsaber in Star Wars, the electronic ‘boop, boop, boop’ of the motion tracker in the aforementioned Alien. 

So it shouldn’t prove a surprise when one of the most popular games of recent years - the delicious Clank!, a game in which players scurry around a dragon’s mountain lair trying to rob him of his treasures while making as little noise as possible - would receive a sequel set not in the same fantasy environment but rather a spaceship deep in the outer corners of the galaxy. 

The premise remains broadly the same in Clank! In Space. Rather than a dragon, this time the players have snuck on board the spaceship of the evil Lord Eradikus, conqueror of most of the known galaxy. On a dare, they have challenged one another to steal a priceless artefact from deep within the ship and escape with it and (hopefully) their lives, all while remaining undetected.

Components 

Unlike its predecessor, one of the things the player will notice when setting up Clank! In Space for the first time is the modular game board. The thick cardboard ship jigsaws together with three double sided modules that can be laid out in different configurations, making each run through Eradikus’ flagship a different experience.

The cards that make up the adventure deck that the players will use to determine encounters as they explore and each of their individual decks are all good quality and feel durable to shuffle although sleeving may improve their longevity. 

A nice touch was the inclusion of four differently shaped and coloured meeples, one for each player. And a beautiful, embroidered felt bag is included for randomly pulling damage cubes out whenever the Lord is suspicious of those exploring below decks without permission. 

If there was one very small complaint to be had, it’s the inclusion of 30 cubes for each player and 24 for Eradikus himself - the exact number necessary for gameplay. These small wooden cubes could be easily misplaced so it would have been nice for Renegade Game Studios to have included one extra of each colour to avoid the game being rendered unplayable when one goes missing until a replacement is obtained.

Cards, tokens and boards are bright and vibrant and the iconography throughout is clear and concise with an excellent rulebook including a glossary for any questions players may have during the teach.

Gameplay

Clank! In Space uses the same game system established by Clank! so players familiar with the original game should slip seamlessly into this dangerous new sci-fi environment. Combining the deck building elements of a Dominion with the push your luck nature of a Quacks of Quedlinberg with a dash of Flamme Rouge’s sprint to the finish, Clank! in Space gives players a large degree of freedom in how they approach exploration.

Starting with a paltry ten card deck, players acquire resources, allies and power crystals, tuning it into a well oiled machine, allowing them to obtain secrets, steal command codes and destroy dangerous enemies. But layered onto this is the constant tension of the noise being generated while exploring.

The actions players take can generate ‘Clank!’, forcing them to add cubes from their personal supply to a pool sat on the board. While sat there, they remain benign but certain activities cause those cubes to be added to a large felt bag already containing 24 from Eradikus himself. When he becomes enraged, players must draw a specific number of cubes from the bag with each one in their colour being the equivalent of one life lost. 

What makes this system so successful is that the player never has complete agency of when those cubes will be added to the bag or when they might next be drawn and that’s before considering the random nature of the draw itself. The game does provide ways to mitigate against bad luck but not enough to entirely alleviate this continuous feeling of tension that covers Clank! in Space like the frosting on a particularly tasty cake.

Conclusion

And I haven’t even converted just how funny Clank! in Space is. Like Clank! before it, Clank! in Space has its tongue firmly in cheek with enemies named Eye Pod and allies named ‘Space Skunk’ and ‘Princess Helia’ (can you guess who they might be referencing?) This is a genuinely funny game with a wicked sense of humour guaranteed to have players screaming and laughing sometimes even in the same turn. 

So Clank! in Space doesn’t just merge game genres together, it also manages to cover that divide between being light and funny enough to be a good time, just enough crunch to give players something to think about while maintaining a large enough element of luck that will generate some brilliant stories for the average playgroup all in a slickly made and affordable production. Grab your copy now!