Meteor, Game Review

The deluxe cover

A meteor swarm is racing towards the Earth. All life is in danger of extinction. Governments are scrambling to build and launch rockets to destroy the meteors before they impact on the planet. Time is limited, however, therefore cooperation is a necessity.

Meteor, from Mayday Games, is a fast paced cooperative game for 1-5 players. Players are building and launching missiles at the incoming threat. The meteors are coming in fast, moving through five elevation zones. Giving the players five rounds, controlled by 5 1-minute timers (in the deluxe), to complete the destruction of the meteors. If any of them get through, the Earth is destroyed.

The game is listed at five minutes, but we found it took a little longer because you have some cleanup between the rounds. Even with between round activities, the total game time wasn't much longer. And, didn't take away from the fast-pace intended. We had 5 players working together to learn and play the game, and we played a half dozen games.

Each game of Meteorstarts with the limitation that players cannot talk to each other. You can gesture, grunt, and try to get attention, but no talking. This lasts until someone can get a communication network in place, satellite or facility. This is a fun twist to the game, which made for some hilarious interactions around the table.

Play is done by placing cards from your hand onto your launch pad, and helping other players build what is on their launch pads by playing supporting cards there. You have a limit number of cards, which are your resources, so you have to watch where your resources can help others. Also, knocking the meteors out of the sky is not just blasting them with the biggest missile you can build.

Along with the resources, you can play with cards that give an advantage and a hindrance to each player. We found these cards added to the game. We played a couple of introductory games without them to learn the basics and then went with everything. All of the cards were balanced and we even faced winning or losing because of the additional factors.

The first game we played took longer as we learned the intricacies of what different cards meant, and what we could do. To accommodate learning, there is a "Time-out" rule so you can look up clarifications. Once we learned what the different cards meant, we weren't looking up rules very often, but we still had a couple of time-outs in our later games.  It seemed like there was a longer learning curve, but it really wasn't any longer because the game is moving so quickly. Even with all of the stops, making sure we knew what the cards meant, we played six games in about an hour.

 

Everyone had fun with Meteor. Some players were getting into it and were talking strategy between games. Everyone agreed this would be a great game to keep handy, and it fits right into being a filler game, or a cabin game.

We were 50/50 on the win/loss record. That shows a good balance for a cooperative game. In one of the games we even pulled off the ultimate B-movie cliff hanger by destroying the last meteor as the fifth timer was running out of sand.

Meteor is from Mayday Games and designed by Mike Young. It is designed for 1-5 players of ages 13+.

Thanks to Mayday Games for the review copy.

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