How to play Comanauts & Review (Spoiler Free)

Comanauts is a story-driven cooperative game.

Title: Comanauts

Year Published: 2019

Designer: Jerry Hawthorne

Publisher: Plaid Hat Games

Players: 2-4 mins

Game Time: ~120 mins

Set-up Time: ~10 mins

Ages: 14+

Theme: Future Fantasy

Mechanisms: Co-operative, Dice Rolling, Action Point Allowance

How to win: While inside the mind of coma patient Dr Strobal, find and defeat his Prime Inner Demon

Game Description

Dr Martin Strobal, the greatest mind of our generation, lies in a coma. His Mobius Ring invention promised to change the world but has instead given us our greatest disaster. Meant to provide the world with unlimited clean energy, the Mobius Ring malfunctioned, bathing Dr Strobal in radiation, and creating a singularity that threatens to consume the world. We need him back, and the only way to revive him from his coma is to enter his subconscious and free him from the demons found within.

How to play Comanauts

Comanauts Round-Up

Theme

I really like this theme. Being someone who jumps into a Coma patient to help them out is a really cool idea.

All of the places in the mind make sense as do the inner demons and there are plenty of characters to play with. Each of them is different and fantastical, but all fit in the theme.

Setup & Rulebook

Setup is fiddley… You have to put stuff out, put some stuff aside then put stuff on some of it and bring the stuff back together for a shuffle…

For me, this isn’t a setup process I would remember, it’s one I need a cheat sheet for.

Due to this, and other factors, I did struggle with the rulebook at first. There are some weird explanations and flipping around pages that just didn’t work for me.

Components & Artwork

These are all great. The board is a book and it works well and as it’s ring-bound it lays perfectly flat.

All the other bits are really nice although there are so many standees it’s hard to find the one you need sometimes. Luckily the three types of standee are colour coded.

The art on the cards, standees and book is all really nice.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

The game is saved from being difficult to teach by being a co-op game. I find it works well to leave out rules until they are needed. No point talking about how combat works in detail until we get to an encounter. So with that in mind, teaching is simple, if done right.

For this reason, it is accessible. You can talk through new players on the options they have with the dice they drew on their turn.

Comanauts Summary

I see this game like T.I.M.E Stories, but more fun and replayable. You’re not in host bodies as much as manifestations of someone’s subconscious but you’re overcoming an obstacle. It has its similarities.

Playing through the different pages of the book is really fun, especially when you’re discovering them for the first time. Subsequent plays… Not so fun. It’s still good, but not AS good.

What does make it good are the characters. Playing with different ones with different skills and equipment makes you play the current page a bit differently.

Also, you don’t know which inner demon is the PRIME inner demon. Each game will be different and you can’t really work it out unless you have a great memory, so I won’t 🙂

Solo Play

I’ve played this solo controlling 2 characters. It’s doable but ONLY if you know the rules well. You have a fair bit to remember including character abilities, equipment, key items as well as the story of the current Comazone. During a battle, I lost track of whose turn it was a couple of times…

So, it’s a fun solo experience as long you have the rules down so you don’t have to think about them.

Airecon 2019

This is the video I did at Airecon after my first play

Rating

A very fun game with a great theme with great mechanisms and lots of variables that add to replayability.

I give it 7/10