Nemesis: Lockdown is a boardgame turned computer game and a quite popular one apparently but I’ve not had the pleasure of playing and really do not know anything about. So this is my first foray into this franchise. The premise is a base on some distant planet that is on lockdown and your goal is to escape or kill the intruders. The intruders are an alien life forms very similar to another franchise most people will have heard about: the Alien movie franchise, and like the aliens in those movies the intruders in Nemesis: Lockdown stalk you from room to room to try and kill you.
The game plays out as follows. The game consists of 15 turns and starts on turn 15 and counts down to turn 1 and if by turn 1 you’ve not fulfilled your objective you lose the game. The objectives can vary from game to game and by your actions. They can be as simple as just escaping, saving a NPC to killing a intruder and getting a sample from them and anything in between.
You start in the lowest level of the base with rooms being randomly shuffled so each game will be different. The randomness does not end there. Each turn will give you random cards that act as abilities or actions you can take in each room, from kicking a door down, repairing a room, destroy a room to actions like shooting, sneaking or searching containers. Every time you go from room to room you need to make a decision to “pay” cards to go silently or quickly. Making the risk of being loud when moving from room to room, generating noise. If you generate too much noise the intruder will hear you and come running. If found by an intruder you’ll have some options, especially if you’re lucky with your cards and have found weapons, you could opt to fight the intruder or running away.
This is the general way a game goes and it is hard, and I mean very hard . I’ve never been able to successfully beat the game yet, my longest run has been about 10 turns before I get killed by an intruder or some kind of environmental hazard. This game is hard and I am made to understand the boardgame is just the same since the developers boast that this game is a complete 1:1 reproduction of the boardgame. The main fun is supposedly to play with friends or other players and while I was reviewing the game I could not find any online games and none of my fellow reviewers or friends have Nemesis: Lockdown, therefore it was a lonely and scary experience, which is kind of the point, and very confusing, which I doubt is the point but who knows.
The game for someone like me who has no experience with the Nemesis franchise was an exercise in frustration. I played the tutorial 3 times just to try and understand the game mechanics and after that I am still a bit unclear on the mechanics. I do not know how well this will go down with the players that do not know it but could be a huge hit for the people that have played the boardgame and hopefully have friends to play with since that is said to be the best way to play.
The graphics are pretty good and the sound design is spot on, creating a very atmospheric experience. The game only crashed on me once and I did not experience any game breaking bugs, all in all it feels very good to play.
In conclusion Nemesis: Lockdown is mainly for people that have experience with the boardgame and for them I think this could be a great game and experience but for people like me with no experience at all and not even heard about the boardgame it is a slog to learn, but could very well be a good game if you put in the hours to learn to play.
Nemesis: Lockdown is out now on Steam.
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