Nemesis: Retaliation board game follows in the footsteps of 1986’s Aliens
“Probably the last part of the Nemesis series.”
The third installment in the Nemesis board game series feels like a clear homage to the 1986 film Aliens.
Revealed via a streamed event hosted by Awakened Realms – the studio behind the Nemesis series – Nemesis: Retaliation is the next entry in the horror board game franchise.
Referred to as “probably the last part of the Nemesis series,” by its designer Adam Kwapiński - the creator behind the previous entries in the franchise - Retaliation sees players taking on the roles of marines on a mission to strike back against a species of violent alien lifeform targeting human space ships and stations, known as Intruders, in a echo of the action-focused plot of the 1986 film Aliens.
According to Kwapiński, Retaliation will give players the opportunity to “take a little revenge,” against the aliens who have tormented them in both the original Nemesis and Nemesis: Lockdown. As a team of marines tasked with confronting the Intruders, they’ll be more prepared than the playable characters in previous entries in the space board game series. Nevertheless, despite having access to state-of-the-art weaponry, tools and skills, it’s not guaranteed that the player characters in Retaliation will be able to survive the vast hordes of Intruders they might face.
On top of that, the description found on the Gamefound crowdfunding campaign for Nemesis: Retaliation hints that the upcoming board game will feature some sort of traitor gameplay mechanic: hinting at the need to watch out for “betrayal at every step,” alongside the threat from the Intruders. Nemesis: Retaliation will support from one to five players, with little else known about the title.
Apart from creating Nemesis: Retaliation – alongside the other entries in the series - Kwapiński is responsible for designing Lords of Hellas, a board game about Greek myths being combined with technology, as well as the video game board game Frostpunk: The Board Game.
Besides the Nemesis series, Awakened Realms has published Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon – a narrative-driven board game set in a dark-fantasy version of the Arthurian legends – as well as recently announcing that it would be publishing a tabletop version of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game series.
The original Nemesis was released in 2018 and sees one to five players attempting to survive an attack by a terrible alien Intruder that’s hunting them down. Players will have different advantages and disadvantages depending on their chosen role, with the goal of completing two personal objectives before the game ends or they’re killed by the Intruder. Nemesis: Lockdown is a 2022 sequel that has players facing the Intruder threat in a space station on an unstable planet. Similarly to the first game, Lockdown sees players trying to complete their individual objectives – but in this entry there are more ways for players to directly betray their fellow crewmembers.
The Gamefound crowdfunding campaign for Nemesis: Retaliation is set to be launched sometime in Q4, with further details yet to be revealed.