Nemesis: Lockdown Board Game Review

Can’t find the first Nemesis and still want to go to a complex full of threats? Well, today we have a worthy replacement for the board for you. In fact, it is the successor of the famous game Nemesis: Lockdown. Where it will take you and what it will offer in terms of gameplay, the following points of our text will tell you.

• Number of players: 1 – 5
• Play time: 120-180 minutes
• Price: 3599 CZK (Tlama Games)
• Age: 12+

Nemesis: Lockdown will take you to the classic settings

Mars has been the setting for a number of horror films and games. One of its bases even played a major role in the first part of the Doom series, so it’s no surprise that creators of different genres often send their heroes here. The story of the semi-cooperative Nemesis: Lockdown also unfolds on a red giant, where humanity managed to build a more or less well-functioning complex. That was until something went wrong. Now you are faced with an infected territory from which you must escape at any cost.

The space base in Nemesis: Lockdown is made up of a series of rooms that you will discover as you progress through the story. There are thirty main room tokens to flip, which are often unique in nature, some of which have a clearly defined location, while others you discover as you travel through the corridors. So you may come across a generator that can act as a power source, or a threat that aims to blow up the entire base, which you will of course be able to prevent once you find it.

The menu of rooms that you can enter also includes a nest of enemy entities or an isolation chamber, which from a certain point represents one of the potential options for saving yourself from death at the claws of alien monsters. Unless, of course, the base explodes. Explosion does not choose. However, before you get to this place, you will have a long journey, associated with an unprecedented amount of fear and deprivation. In addition, you can always count on critical moments that can affect the course of the entire adventure.

For each character, your priority is to survive. Some heroes will be able to select their secret mission from the map menu. Some missions pit you against invaders or force you to focus on rescuing other players. Others work with the fact that no one is allowed to know about the incident, which in practice means that you will have to kill the rest of the survivors. Missions are often related to the number of players. Not all of them can be used when playing in a certain set.

You choose what you want to focus on at the start of the game, as well as at the stage of choosing your hero. There are six characters to choose from in the menu, and it’s not a bad idea to choose them depending on what task you have, which is probably the main reason why you only choose a character after the task is chosen. You have the base staff and survivors from the first Nemesis at your disposal. Each has their own starting room, knowledge of monsters, starting item, and special equipment.

For example, a pair of survivors from the first Nemesis begin their journey in an isolation chamber. Neither of them has a starting item, but they do have their own special item (a card). For example, Subject X is equipped with Howl, which can place a noise token in every hallway on the lot where he stands, or, conversely, remove noise from the environment. Noise itself in Nemesis: Lockdown is created using a basic move, during which you roll a dice. You can avoid the roll if you make a careful move.

Noisy individuals do not survive long here.

You don’t generate noise, so it’s good to place a bet when one chip is already lying in the corridor, because the surrounding world is already reacting to the second one. First, you throw away all the noise from your surroundings, then rummage through the bag, where various intruders may be waiting for you. But if you’re lucky, it may well happen that you pull out an empty token, which means that no monster will appear, but the space around you will be “filled” with noise tokens.

If an alien life form does arrive on the scene, a fight will break out. If the character is bound to a monster, he has only three basic actions available. He can attack with a melee weapon, shoot, or try to retreat. If you have ammo dice in Nemesis: Lockdown, you can shoot, which in practice looks like rolling a red die. You can hurt the enemy or miss them completely. Interestingly, certain symbols cannot harm certain types of attackers.

Assuming you decide to leave the premises without a fight, you must first assess the actions of the attacker(s). They do not roll dice, but directly assess the event cards of their kind. Sometimes it is a violent impulse, sometimes it is just a “small” scratch associated with a nasty infection. The impact is usually increased in the absence of light. Yes, you read that correctly. Since Nemesis: Lockdown takes place in a gigantic complex, you will have to keep it running.

If you ignore this factor, it is quite possible that the lights will eventually turn off and your characters will be having fun. Personally, I really like this element because it puts much more pressure on the player than without it. However, some fans of the original Nemesis concept may not like it. However, the game gives you the opportunity to reduce its impact with the help of items. For example, the chemical light can sting you quite badly, and if you additionally discover the weakness of the attackers Lightshy while using the laboratory, its impact on enemies will increase even more.

However, this doesn’t mean you’ll make it to the end of the Nemesis: Lockdown campaign. During each story, you can become infected with an alien infection, be exposed to slime, catch fire, or suffer other injuries. Injuries can increase the cost of certain actions or reduce the maximum number of cards you can have in your hand. Therefore, you’ll only achieve victory if you cooperate for at least most of the game. Even traitors want to survive, and you definitely can’t do it alone.

The impressive game Nemesis: Lockdown will give you an adventure full of tension and unexpected turns.

It took me many hours to complete the scenario in Nemesis: Lockdown, and I must admit that it was full of fear and pressure. There were many monsters everywhere, and I did not know which of my companions I could really trust, and who, on the other hand, was a “servant” of those who were chasing me. The base design was decent, so no two playthroughs were the same thanks to it and a number of other elements.

In many ways, Nemesis: Lockdown reminded me of the board game Inscrutable. However, overall, the experience was a little more brutal than sailing the ocean. So if you want a board game that will always make you feel afraid and uncertain, and above all, experience powerful stories, this is almost a sure bet.

We would like to thank Czech distributor Mindok for providing us with a copy of Nemesis: Lockdown.