The Island of Doctor Necreaux: Second Edition (2018)

Overview

Create your agent, infiltrate the island, defeat Necreaux's minions, find the scientists, and escape before time runs out!

The Island of Doctor Necreaux is a cooperative adventure game for 1 to 4 exceptionally talented secret agents set in a 50s-era pulp-sci-fi world. The diabolical Doctor Necreaux has captured the world's top scientists and forced them to build a Doomsday Device. Your mission: Explore the Doctor's secret island lair, find the scientists, and escape in your shuttlecraft before the island is blown to Kingdom Come!

In this simultaneous action game, players take one turn together as a team. At the start of each turn, you decide whether you're exploring or resting. When you explore you declare a speed, which represents how quickly you're exploring the island adventure deck and determines how many encounters your team will attempt to resolve this turn. You want to draw as many cards as you can because the scientists are hidden somewhere in the middle of the adventure deck, the escape shuttle is hidden in the bottom, and you have a limited number of turns before the island blows up. However, you can't be too fast or you'll fall prey to one of the island's many traps. If you choose to rest, your team gets to heal up and recharge.

The Island of Doctor Necreaux incorporates creative ability manipulation (in assessing how player powers interact and applying them appropriately), press-your-luck (when selecting a speed and during combat), and resource management (deciding when to use charges - a scarce resource that fuels agent powers - and when to use a turn to rest instead of explore). The game comes with quick start rules and multiple variants to increase replayabiliy and adjust thr difficulty to accommodate a wide range of player skill. The island and agent skills are all card-based, making the island and the agents different every time.

We at Invisible City are excited about the improvements in the second edition:

All-new full-color art. Almost all cards have their own unique art. Full-color art on card fronts and backs. More & better components. Bigger box (with room for expansions), better cards, bigger rules, enough dice for all players to play, etc. Quick-start rules to make it easy for first time players to play. All-new "secret cache" cards to adjust the game for different skill levels. Clearer/better ways to increase the difficulty for experienced players. All cards are numbered for easy set-up of pre-generated scenarios. By popular BGG demand, the game's been re-tooled to use 2d6 as the primary resolution mechanic (instead of 1d6). The rules and every card have been re-written to accommodate this.