John Carpenter’s The Thing is one of my absolute favorite horror movies. I love the oppressive atmosphere, the tense interpersonal drama of this small group losing trust in themselves, the nail-biting soundtrack that makes your skin shiver. And it’s very much the granddaddy of hidden identity horror, from Werewolf to Town of Salem, to Among Us. Easy translation to board game, right? Yes, actually, as the latest The Thing board game from Pendragon Game Studio is actually the third board game to use the license, preceded by a smaller box game in 2010 and The Thing: Infection At Outpost 31, which has been a perennial hit since it came out in 2017. So what does The Thing, audaciously titled as THE board game of the film, offer different from previous titles? Well, it’s got a European design philosophy and the needless complexity you can only expect from the country that brought us the Alfa Romeo. But I’ll get more into that later, let’s see what’s inside of The Thing.
What’s In The Box?
- 1 base board
- 1 weather die
- 34 fuel tokens
- 12 flamethrower reload tokens
- 16 food tokens
- 4 dog tokens
- 1 rescue helicopter token
- 1 double-sided weather table
- 1 freezing tile and 1 freezing marker
- 1 laboratory bag
- 1 contagion bag
- 1 leader sheet
- 1 leader token
- 16 human contagion tokens
- 8 alien contagion tokens
- 8 suspicion disks
- 8 character sheets
- 8 character standees
- 8 plastic bases
- 4 alien standees
- 4 clear plastic bases
- 16 role cards
- 51 action cards
- 11 location cards
- 12 weapon cards
- 15 item cards
- 40 lab tokens
- 9 dog infection tokens
- 20 damage counters
- 1 power failure token
- 6 fire tokens
- 8 alien strength tokens
- 3 1-3p action dice
- 8 1-3p role cards
- 1 1-3p leader sheet
I’ll commend The Thing for not just slapping screenshots and movie stills on instead of using real art, but the art they did use is…weird. It’s not bad by any means but feels weirdly standard and cartoonish considering the theme and the vibes that come with it. The heroes look like animated version of themselves and the grotesqueness of the alien is muted a bit by the art style, though it overall does a good job making the various forms look sufficiently freaky-deaky. Maybe it’s a consequence of being a bit desensitized, maybe it’s trying to appeal to a slightly broader fanbase, it’s certainly a choice.
I think the main issue I had with the game is the way the rulebook is set up and laid out. This is a frequent issue with games trying to juggle a ton of moving parts like this, but it felt especially egregious here. Just an absolute chore trying to get any sense of when, how, or why things happened. Like even the basic concept of linear time seemed lost on whoever laid this book out. We played an entire game completely wrong until I dug up a streamlined version on BGG and EVEN THEN I’m still not 100% sure if we did everything correctly. I highly, HIGHLY recommend using the version made by the Esoteric Order Of Gamers before wasting hours trying to figure out how basic combat works like I did.
How’s The Thing Play?
Once you’re able to actually figure out the rules, you’ll find a fairly complex, asymmetrical strategy game that uses its hidden identity elements to its advantage.
Each player gets a character from the movie, who are essentially identical save for a situational ability that can be useless for the whole game or a key to victory depending on the circumstances. Your goal is to stay alive until you can pull off one of the methods of escape: take off in the base copter or snow cat or get picked up by the rescue helicopter. All the while you’re of course trying to fend off a killer alien who’s lurking as one of your ostensible friends. It’s very much Among Us the board game, as you try to maintain key systems on the base (food, heat, power) while preparing whichever means of escape you can.
Each round you pick which jobs you’re going to do based on which room you place your character. Then you give either a repair or use card to the leader (or a sabotage card if you’re an alien) and then they’ll draw them one by one and assign them based on where they go. This system is actually pretty interesting for a game like this and I really liked the extra layer of strategy that comes with the card selection. Sometimes you only have one card that works for what you want and you have to really make it count.
The Alien aspect of the game is where things get a little rocky. In most asymmetrical games like this (Jaws being my gold standard), the “monster” character has a lot of tools at their disposal to deal with the heroes and keep the pressure on for the game. Hidden identity games likewise usually give the ones trying to stay hidden plenty of tools to stay hidden while also working towards their win condition. In this game, the alien relies a LOT on player choice and prediction in a way that doesn’t really feel satisfying. It is not hard to outplay the alien here. When you’re still hidden, your only real way to manipulate things is with sabotage cards (though you can theoretically win if you escape with everyone without being found out). Being outed is kind of the only way TO have fun as the Alien, which is I think a big blunder design-wise. Encounters with the alien are also needlessly complicated thanks to a weird strength system that is weighted very much against the alien. It’s an attempt to add more strategy to the Alien’s role but it just makes their job entirely too hard.
The final piece of the puzzle here is the suspicion meter. This replicates the paranoid atmosphere that you really need to capture for the game and, like seemingly everything about this game, it seems to confuse complexity for depth. When two players, or a character and a dog, they put “contagion tokens” in a bag and then they’re drawn out to see who might come out infected. If no person or dog involved is an alien, then you’re clear, otherwise there’s a possibility of infection. There’s an accusation phase (which is super easy to game so long as you stay in the lowest part of the suspicion track) and ways to test with a blood bag or hot wire. This will immediately out any alien found and are so easy to do it, again, makes stealth runs as an alien really quite hard.
The Verdict?
As much as I wanted to like The Thing, it’s just trying to do too much with a property that needs things to be tense and controlled to maximize the paranoia and fear. There are just too many moving parts to juggle without the pressure that would make the chaos work. Instead it just becomes a chore.
The bigger mistake, though, is in how it handles the alien. There’s just way too many things going against the alien’s effectiveness to make it fun to play as them. With games like Jaws or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you really feel like a movie monster who represents a very real threat to people. Here, the Alien just feels a bit more like a pest. Put out some glue traps and get the BB gun and you’ll be fine. It also squanders the “hidden identity” aspect by making the hidden nature of the beastie incredibly hard to maintain except at high player counts. Once the Alien is outed, which will be fast, a good half of the game’s mechanics basically go out the window.
I have to give Pendragon Studios credit for trying to do something interesting with The Thing, but unfortunately I can’t really recommend this over the much more cleanly designed Infection At Outpost 31. There’s a lot to like about this game especially as a fan of the classic film. I don’t want you to think I’m saying don’t at least give it a try. If anything, I’d say I was just disappointed.
You can grab The Thing from Ares Games, Amazon, or at your FLGS at an MSRP of $59.90.
Images via Pendragon Games and Universal
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