Use Negotiation, Bidding, and Backstabbing to Make it Off Planet in We're Doomed!

Work together for your own survival — but your alliances will be shaky when only a few, if any, will be able to survive the global destruction.

In We’re Doomed! players are world leaders working together to build a rocket to escape the doomed planet. Only problem is, there's not enough room for everyone. Who will earn the only seats on the rocket? It's hard to say when you don't even know exactly how many seats there are to give away!

Gameplay

The game box is placed in the center of the table and the fifteen minute sand timer is started. Starting with the first player, each player announces one action they are going to take. There are five possible actions: take two resource tokens, take one influence token, discard a resource to steal an influence from another player, discard an influence to steal two resources from another player, or discard eight resources to nuke another player (when a player is nuked they are eliminated from the game). Each player is dealt a special government card at the start of the game. Your government will give you a special bonus for a specific action, such as allowing you to collect three resources instead or two, or letting your nuke for five resources instead of eight.

After each player has taken an action, players contribute to the project by throwing resources into the game box and announcing how many they've put in. Players can do this in any order, and can throw more in after their initial contribution. Once everyone has finished contributing to the project, the player who added the most resources takes the start player token, one influence token, and draws an event card. Some event cards are read aloud while others the player keeps secret. Event cards are often designed to waste time, move resources or influence around, or protect players from certain actions or give them bonuses. They are generally a little silly (such as causing the reader to read the card aloud very slowly unless players bribe them to speed up, or allowing a player to cheat until caught, etc).

A new round then begins. Play continues until the timer runs out at which point you immediately stop and count the number of resources that were contributed to the project. If there are forty tokens there is one seat on the rocket. Each additional ten tokens add another seat on the rocket. Unless an event card drawn during the course of the game changes the criteria of who claims a seat, the player with the most influence claims the first seat, and subsequent seats are given to the players with the next most influence. There will likely not be seats for everyone, and all remaining players will be left on the planet.

Review

We're Doomed! is a fun combination of bidding, action selection, and real-time play. The play grows increasingly frantic, which pairs well with the event cards that are often trying to eat up time or throw you an unexpected plot twist. As the sand timer nears the end, players are pushing to get in that one more turn and those final resource tokens that can make all the difference in how many players make it on board.

There are a lot of event cards, and they all tend to be silly or fun, and the result is a light-hearted tone for a game that doesn't take itself too seriously. Players looking for something more serious aren't going to enjoy this, however.

The player elimination can be a problem, since it is possible to eliminate players quite early on with the nuke ability. It's not a super long game, but even sitting around for ten minutes watching others play isn't ideal. However, the risk of being nuked is one of the factors that drives decisions in the game — do you really want to let a player collect enough resources that they have the option to nuke someone? You'd better steal their resources to keep them at bay.

We’re Doomed! is clever, a little different, and if approached with a sense of fun, quite enjoyable. The sand timer is a great set piece, and the moment at the end where you count up the resources is suspenseful. There is great player interaction as you steal from each other and bid against one another. Players sometimes also are forced to come to unanimous votes due to events, which can challenging, and alliances and enemies can have a big result on who ends up making it on board the rocket. The game also plays quickly enough that it's easy to play several times back to back.

Pros:  Unique party game, plays fast, event cards are silly fun

Cons: Players can be eliminated early on, some players may not enjoy the randomness caused by the events

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.