Clank! In! Space! Review - Solid Sci-Fi Deck-Building Fun

This week I took the luxury of a day off work to go to Chance & Counters in Birmingham's Custard Factory in Digbeth. There will be more on the venue in a coming article but for now, I wanted to talk about one of the games we played, Clank! In! Space!

The first board game cafe I went to (a good few years ago now) was the place where I was able to play the original Clank! and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Renegade Game Studios and Paul Dennen had done a great job of mixing push your luck elements with traditional deck-building mechanics. So, it was very nice to play their follow on to that which includes a few tweaks to the format to make it worth considering over its predecessor.

In Space, Everyone Can Hear You Clank

A game of Clank! In! Space (which will just be known as Clank! from here on out to save me from exclamation marks) has two-to-four players rushing through the flagship of Lord Eradikus. Your aim is to get your hands on his prized artefacts and as much loot as you can before the furious villain can send you to an early grave.

The game board is made up of tiles which present you with a variety of different challenges to overcome if you're to get to his Command module and steal away with the artefacts worth the most victory points.

This is one of the key aspects of Clank! which I really enjoyed over its Fantasy predecessor in that the game board feels a lot more nuanced and the routes to victory are not so obvious. Tie that into the fact that you can flip parts around in order to make different maps and you have a lot more replayability when you're in space.

On your turn, Clank! follows the standard rules of a deck-building game. You'll draw a hand of cards from the deck and then try and use them in a variety of combinations to buy new cards from the 'market', move across the board to unlock different areas and edge towards those artefacts or fight some or all of the numerous foes that are on your heels throughout the game.

The sweet nudge into comedic calamity is the introduction of noise or clank! Some cards, like Stumble in your opening hand, add a cube from your supple to a general pool which represents the noise you're making as you run around Lord Eradikus' ship.

If certain enemies are then drawn from the deck into the market those cubes are put into a bag and drawn out in increasing numbers as the game progresses. If your cube is drawn you then take that as damage on your health track and you're one step closer to getting found my Eradikus and his minions.

As I mentioned above, the cubes are drawn in increasing numbers throughout the game and this means that things will start off calm and reasonably easy but as the game goes on, new areas are unlocked and Lord Eradikus becomes aware of your presence meaning things ramp up into a race to get out alive.

This is where the push your luck element of the game comes into play. The juiciest bundles of victory points are deep within the bowels of the ship but if you 'die' when you're not in the cargo bay or escaped via a life pod then you score...nothing. This means that when you're rushing through the ship you need to be mindful of what other players are doing and time your plans appropriately.

When you die, you're out of the game and normally I would furrow my brow at that but in Clank! the players who are out then just draw cubes from the bag every time it would have been their turn. So, in that sense, the game tries to rush you towards its conclusion so you don't feel left out. Also, it is very, very fun drawing cubes out of the bag and punishing other players...maybe that's just me?

Clank! In! Space! - Worth A Go?

There is a lot more nuance to the rules of Clank! In! Space! in terms of the locations you can explore, the points you can get from tokens on the board and the way that items can be used to traverse the board in quick and interesting ways. All of this makes it effectively a points buffet where whatever you do, you can get your hands on some victory points and feel like a turn was effective.

The game does suffer from the same things as every deck-builder though of course. If you buy the wrong cards or your deck is too big or too small then you're going to run into problems where your turns might not be as effective as you'd hope. However, Paul Dennen has made it so that even if you get a dud hand, there is normally something you can do to help progress in the right direction.

Also, make sure that you tell players to try and plan out their turn ahead of time. There is nothing worse than it coming to someone's turn and they then sit there mulling over a strategy from the beginning. Even though cards will change and positioning too, you can still get a sense of the basics you need to accomplish on a turn. Let's banish the analysis paralysis!

In reality though, this is a fun and very easy to get into deck-builder with plenty of depth. Because of the boards being double-sided and the deck consistently throwing out different enemies, upgrades, companions and accessories each time you play, you'll always have a new approach to consider when playing. Building an engine and seeing it work is a pleasure and Paul Dennen seems to have done what was needed to iron out the kinks in regular Clank!

Additionally, the game is also packed with lots of Sci-Fi references and nudges to the genre. This is something which I'm sure will wear thin eventually but as a board game cafe pick and a first outing, it was fun trying to work out where some of the cards had been drawn from within the wider sphere of geekdom.

If you like deck-building games and are perhaps looking to get a new one then I would heartily recommend Clank! In! Space! It's fun, quick, easy to learn and the push your luck mechanics really give it an edge over older titles.

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