Even tho' it was actually a remake of an earlier Howard Hawks movie, it is John Carpenter's 1982 movie The Thing that we all remember as a cult horror movie. It was revisited in a notional prequel or reboot in 2011, and the box cover might suggest it is that version that is recreated in The Thing: The Boardgame from Ares Games and Pendragon Game Studio but the characters are those from the 1982 film. In any event, Giuseppe Cicero and Andrea Crespi have given us a hidden role/deduction game that closely replicates the paranoia-fuelled plot and feel of The Thing movies.
Tho' this is notionally a game for 1-8 players, it is very much at its best at higher player counts (6+). The players all represent humans on a remote base in the Antarctic. One of the seemingly human players tho' is not what they seem: they are The Thing - an alien contagion. The players have a limited supply of food and fuel so, akin to Dead of Winter (Plaid Hat Games), it's already a struggle to survive. Every turn a weather die will determine the rate of attrition of fuel supplies. Players have to visit locations to effect repairs in the radio room (needed before they can summon a rescue helicopter), maintain the boiler (to better eke out fuel supplies) and man the kitchen (to make better use of the limited supply of food). They'll want to visit the armoury to pick up weapons and the commissary to collect items that can be used, for example, to help identify whether a player who is acting suspiciously has been infected with the contagion.
Players each have a hand of three action cards (tho' that's likely to get reduced to two as the game progresses and the base's systems fail). These either show Use, Repair or Sabotage. Every turn they hand a card face down to the player who is designated as the leader. An additional card is added from the draw pile. These cards are then shuffled and the leader flips them one at a time and allocates the action indicated to one of the characters. The player who is secretly The Thing may hand in a Sabotage card, and of course, there's a 1 in 3 chance that the blind drawn card from the deck will be a Sabotage card. If and when a Sabotage card is flipped, the leader will have to allocate it to one of the characters. They won't get to take their action but the location will suffer a sabotage; depending on the specific location this may involve taking cards out of play (eg: from the armoury) or adding damage markers that will need subsequently to be repaired (eg: from the radio room).
Each character has a special ability, and in our Board's Eye View plays a couple of these seemed more powerful than others. Worker placement-style, players move their avatar to the location they choose, and they hand in one of their action cards. If two players go to the same location, they have to share ID tokens: they pass two onto the other player at their location. If they are human, both tokens will be human; if they carry the contagion then one will be human and one will be alien. Players choose one token to look at. If they pick a token that shows the alien, then they too become infected as The Thing...
For the player who starts off as The Thing, you'll need to make a judgement call as to when it's best to give up on attempts to merely sabotage the group and try to spread the contagion and when to just reveal yourself and seek to reduce the other players' options, hasten the demise of the base and consume the other players...
You may well be suspicious of a character that goes to the same location as another but there could be very good, human, reasons for doing so; for example, to increase the chance of successfully pulling off the action at that location and to capture the dogs that are loose on the base and which may or may not carry the contagion (there's a 2 in 9 chance that any dog you encounter carries the contagion and can infect you...)
A suspicion track shows how often each character has shared a location with another, and players will use this to help gauge the increased likelihood that that character is infected. Players point each round at who they most suspect, and there are blood tests to check on whether or not the most suspected player is human... Whether revealed by the other players' actions or by choice, a player carrying the contagion can be revealed as The Thing. They then shed their human avatar and play differently, secretly choosing one or two locations each turn at which they will emerge after the other players have moved their avatars. This adds a guess/bluff/push-your-luck element to the game that is reminiscent of Not Alone (Corax Games) as players guess and second guess where The Thing will emerge. Players will be more tempted to double up at locations to avoid being overpowered by The Thing but, of course, they risk doubling up with a player who also carried the contagion... If The Thing emerges at a location where they are able to consume a human or one of the dogs, it'll add to The Thing's strength and it'll mean player elimination for the unfortunate human.
To win, all the humans need to escape the base. If players escape on the CAT or helicopter leaving any other uninfected humans behind, the humans lose. They lose too if any of those escaping carry the contagion... You need to be pretty sure who is human and who is not before the helicopter arrives and you make that final dash to reach the outside world...
The Thing: The Boardgame does a great job of replicating the look and feel of the John Carpenter movie. It actually plays quite smoothly, tho' our first play took rather longer than the indicated 60-90 minutes because it involved quite a bit of argument over the minutia of the rules. These leave much to be desired in terms of organisation and clarity, so you might want to explore alternative versions that have been posted by fans on BoardGameGeek.
We've previously reviewed the The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 (The Op). Both are good games that share the same movie-inspired theme and core hidden role/deduction mechanic but The Thing: The Boardgame has more depth and arguably more intense player interaction. We also liked the artwork from Davide Corsi and Riccardo Crosa. The Thing: The Boardgame is certainly a thematically strong alternative to that other classic hidden role deduction game: Battlestar Galactica (Fantasy Flight Games).