The Captain is Dead

The Captain is Dead is one of my all-time favorite co-op board games. The game was originally available through a print on demand service called Game Crafter before being co-published by another company, AEG. It's probably an understatement to say that I have played hundreds of games of The Captain is Dead with my friends around my board game table, so I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the mechanics and strategies of the game—which is to say I know pretty quickly how screwed I am! In The Captain is Dead, you play as the crew of your favorite mid-century science fiction show's titular spaceship, which has just had the worst mid-season cliffhanger of all time. The ship is on fire, aliens are aboard, and of course, the Captain is Dead. It's your job to get the ship's Jump Core engines back online before the shields fail or too many aliens board the ship. It might sound easy, but every round a new alert will occur, which might bring more hostile aliens, knock the teleporter offline, introduce a gravity anomaly that makes movement difficult, or even something weirder. The ship is split into several rooms, and those rooms contain various systems that need to be repaired, replaced, or upgraded to keep the ship from blowing up long enough to escape. The Captain is Dead: The Video Game (that's this page that you're reading right now!) is a pretty faithful adaptation, as would be expected from Thunderbox. All of the fear and worry that somehow you'll never be able to repair the ship and jump away is still here, along with a few new elements for this version. (The super being narrator looks a little familiar, doesn't he?) At times, the interface can be a little clunky feeling until you remember where everything is and learn the iconography. Additionally, while the board game has an impressive 17 characters to choose from across 7 player slots (that is, up to 7 players can play, and each player color is restricted to specific characters based on that color choice), the digital adaptation currently only has 7, one for each "color" player, up to a maximum of 4 characters. This might seem like a lot of content missing, but the player roles available in this adaptation are probably the best strategic options anyway (though my favorite is missing) and the missing characters will be added for free about once a month. The ability to rewind your turn is something you will probably be doing a lot, as it's very easy to misclick and move a character when you mean to view a room rather than go to the room, and occasionally strange things will happen that are clearly not meant to happen, but the team has been pretty active with responding to bug reports. The difficulty is very real, and while it may seem frustrating at times to lose over and over—the "odds of survival" when starting the game is usually pretty accurate and you will lose a lot more than you win—when you do win it makes it even more rewarding. Check out The Captain is Dead at the Game Crafter website: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/the-captain-is-dead AEG's page: https://www.alderac.com/the-captain-is-dead/ Read the BoardGameGeek entry: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/159503/captain-dead

Game is awesome, it's a shame this doesn't have higher ratings. I can talk to you about how I like the board game, but I feel like this version brings it to a whole new level. The music is great, I was thinking of running it during physical playthroughs of this game, it also adapts a little to the events happening. There's also animations on what's happening, aliens teleporting and shooting, small vessels being destroyed, it definitely feels more alive than the board game. Let me also mention the different quotes and personalities for each crew member, they interact and talk to each other, I enjoy and adore the many star trek quotes. Finally, if you manage to survive, instead of a "You Win!" screen, there's an epic final sequence, totally unnecessary, but very cool and appreciated. So the board game is solid, you need to know if you like it, it's a cooperative crisis management kind of deal, but all the bells and whistles added by this digital version, man, I can't imagine a better adaptation. EDIT: Hey there, it's awesome to see a developer appear here! It is no trouble at all, you guys deserve the praise, I can see a lot of love was put into this. It might not be my favourite board game, but I think it's my favourite digital adaptation, I have no problem in saying this. Also, thanks for the suggestion, I'm checking out Occams Laser and there's some groovy stuff in there! As for the fun fact, do you mean the computer voice telling you what is recommended and the general status of the ship? Yeah, that is actually quite useful and cool! I'll also take this review a step further: the major complaint I saw was the GUI being hard to navigate, read or being in general unintuitive, which I disagree with. It's fairly elegant, the icons are clear, concise, have different colors related to status, all the important info is displayed and if you need further details just hold your left mouse button on the appropriate system. Also, the undo button is a life saver for people learning the game or trying to make that perfect turn work (even justified by our personal Q overseeing us, hah!). Last but not least, the game is pretty stylish in my taste, but that's personal. I can't wait for the new content and I would gladly even buy DLCs if you're planning to port Episode 2 and 3! Thanks again, guys, stay awesome! EDIT 2: Nominating this for Best Soundtrack in Steam awards 2021. EDIT 3: These people just added Jon St. John (Duke Nukem) as the Janitor, you have made an ally for life.

[ENG] This is such a wonderful game! I worked in localizing the game to Spanish, the music is fabulous (Occams Laser work... I highly recommend his music if you are into synthwave), the game is entertaining (yet rock solid! At least for my tiny little human sized brain...) and.. I think that's all you need to know... as of right now. If you are a sci-fi fan / fast-paced strategy game enthusiast you're loving it I'll tell you! It has some gorgeous voice acting from both Kevan Brightning and Elias Toufexis. [ESP] Este es un juego maravilloso! Traduje este juego al español, la música es fantástica (es de Occams Laser!), y el juego es muy divertido(Aunque creo que es un poco difícil para mi primitivo cerebro pequeño...) Y... creo que eso es todo lo que necesitas saber... Si sos un fan de la ciencia ficción y de los juegos de estrategia vas a amar el juego. Verdaderamente agradezco haber podido trabajar en este juego tan entretenido y fascinante. En él actúan Kevan Brightning y Elias Toufexis también!

This game is EXTREMELY fun and very challenging! I love the effectiveness of the UI and the game look is very appealing. There is a LOT going on with multiple difficulty settings so replayability is HUGE! HIGHLY RECOMMEND! edit: Having never played the board game I was overwhelmed at first. The tutorial gives you the absolute basics and NOTHING MORE! There is a LOT more that you need to learn if you want and hope of winning the game on even normal. After using more of the characters and understanding their special abilities and the abilities given by the ship itself I am a lot more comfortable playing it. I have now won on normal difficulty several times and will try the insane difficulty soon. In my opinion this game should be played by every TBS enthusiast. Kudos devs!

An extremely good adaptation of the board game. Fun to play. If only it was multiplayer. I hope one day for the game expansions for the board game to be made. I'd certainly buy them.

I play a lot of board games, and was considering getting this the physical game but this is just too cluttered. EVERYTHING is on fire which is funny, but unhelpful when surveying your ship and deciding what to do. Lots of other design choices that I didn't like, mentioned in other comments. And hard, I mean REAL hard on even on COWARD mode - I've played it like 10 times (4 hours) and I haven't beaten it yet. The difficulty has put me off the board game now :( If you do get it then go to the options and turn off the extra animations that slow the game pace down and add nothing after you have seen them once.

its a really cool game it screams retro visual and music. i hope the add the rest of the crew and the expansions, i'd buy it. i hope they make more board game adaptations into video games, My friends dont play board games and this is the only way, best way too.

I think this game is great! If you like board games and Star Trek... or any type of captain simulator, I think you will like this. It runs great on my 2017 potato with no graphics card. Wonderful presentation, pace and atmosphere.

I have moderate play on LC and extensive play on Android. As it is virtually the same game on both platforms, I feel I know the game sufficiently well to make a review. This game is a very faithful and fun adaptation of the board game of the same name. The music is great, I personally really like the art style and the voice acting is excellent (we even have Jon St John of Duke Nukem fame voicing the janitor!). My biggest gripe with the game at first was the interface. It required too many clicks for a game where you need to have an overview of the entire ship. The introduction of the tactical HUD has fixed most of the issues I had with the UI and has made the game so much easier to read and enjoy that I recommend absolutely to everyone to simply set the UI to tactical as soon as possible and not bother with the original. As for the game, just like its board game counterpart, it is very difficult and there is a surprising amount of replayability on offer. You can try to beat this game on a lot of difficulty settings with varying alert decks and crewmembers which will all drastically affect how you approach the game. The game has a very strong sense of identity and it really does feel like the board game coming to life. The voice actors all fit perfectly and the music adds to the tension and excitement. Now a few gripes I have with the game. Alert overrides are on a timer. Meaning you only have a few seconds to decide whether you want to override the incoming alert. It usually isn't a problem as you can see incoming alerts and decide whether you'll override before clicking on End Turn. However in specific situations, you'll only see what the next alert is as the game gives you 3 or 4 seconds to offer an override. And in those situations I'd still like some time to properly assess whether it's worth spending command skills or not. Sometimes UI elements blend in with the "flavor screens", meaning most systems have a bunch of "meaningless" info as a decoration, but certain elements in the game are actually interactive. For example, the security system has a slider once you choose a room allowing you to select how many aliens you want to kill in that room. You don't actually have to click on the security system and watch the animation play over and over. The game is still being updated (obviously with all the crew from the board game but also a new UI and gameplay improvements) so I'm fairly confident that some hiccups will still be ironed out. If you enjoy strategy games and sci-fi settings, this comes highly recommended. Very fun, very engaging and very challenging.

This game is extremely poorly balanced. Even on normal difficulty, it is impossible to win. There is no excuse for this poor of balancing. This is not a case of strategy, just poor planning. Its like playing Russian roulette with a AR15. No matter what you do, you will lose.