Review of Alone: Avatar Expansion

Blurb from the publisher: 'Alone™ is a sci-fi survival horror / dungeon crawler game that will pit a single, stranded hero against 1-3 evil masterminds who will do their best to stop the hero from completing a quest to discover the truth and save his companions.

The expansion also includes the Avatar rules, which add a new level to the gameplay. This time the evil side players move an Avatar on the map and try to catch the hero in different ways, but be careful! The hero becomes more powerful every time the avatar strikes. This additional content expands the possibilities of the hero but also that of the evil players when creating their own scenarios and allows everyone to try out new scenarios.'

What you get: Your EUR 25 or equivalent will buy you Alone: Avatar Expansion, an expansion for Alone, an asymmetrical semi-cooperative dungeon crawler that started the game line of the same name. It is reminded that the base game accommodates from two to four players in a maximum of two hours and a half. The present expansion does not change either the number of players nor the playing time.

In addition to the small-size, 4-page rulebook in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, which can also be found on the publisher's website free of charge, the expansion includes the following: 7 miniatures, 2 Character cards, 5 Avatar cards, 5 Avatar tokens, and one Hero Powers card. Note that all the cards are provided in all the aforementioned language versions (e.g. the total number of Character cards is 10, 2 per language version).

Gameplay: The two new heroes wear the stealth suit and the the assault suit. The former protects heroes from attacks of opportunity while the latter increases a characters efficiency in combat against multiple enemies. Used as a companion, the former allows free attacks against remaining combatants. If it gets sacrificed, the hero gets a free attack against a combatant and avoids an attack of opportunity while moving. The latter allows the hero to concentrate fire and make more than one attacks against a single opponent. If it gets sacrificed, the hero can perform two free fight actions.

The new rules allow the evil players to directly manifest into the game as Avatars, i.e. paragons of evil. There are five avatars overall, each associated with a deck plus an AI avatar. Depending on the number of evil players, avatars are distributed differently. Each avatar has different statistics and a unique special power, like turning off the lights, or increasing danger. Avatars count against the total of creatures on a level and are considered Bosses for all card effects. An avatar can be upgraded on four different elements, namely twice on aspects of his special power (like its effect and range) and twice on his stats. An evil player may decide to activate his avatar instead of playing a reaction. Every time this happens, the hero gains a danger token. An avatar can spawn, move, or teleport, if still unrevealed. Avatars cannot be killed; they are merely knocked down. The hero however receives a reward of as many danger tokens as the avatar had upgrades every time he accomplishes this feat.

The hero can use the danger tokens he accumulates on six different new powers, each with a different cost. Amongst others, he can reroll dice (2 tokens), gain adrenaline usable only for double actions (3 tokens), gain one experience (4 tokens), or even gain two experience in one go (7 tokens). This exchange of tokens happens at the beginning of a turn, and does not count as an action.

The strong points: It seems like every expansion wants to offer a new take on the hero, and up to now they all do so successfully. The suits in Avatar ensure that your hero will not shy away from battle, even though his tactics will be very different depending on the one he uses. I enjoyed how the companion's sacrifice ability in both of them feels like a final stand; not every suit does that. Time its use well for maximum effect, and you might win yourself a game.

It's nice to see the evil players stomp the labyrinth as undying bossmen. To start with, I liked the three different ways of picking an avatar depending on the number of players. Avatars increase the tactical options the evil players have, seeing how when they play an avatar they don't play reactions, thus they don't sabotage their future turns with less danger tokens on the board. On the other hand, they do hand out free danger tokens to the hero to use as he sees fit, and even more so, without using an action. Thus, my evil brethren, be prudent. The avatars are not there to be promenaded around, nor to become easy pickings against a hero who can hold his ground. Use them cleverly in order to grind the hero down, to bring him into situations where he will waste both turns and resources without much to gain. Avatars never die, yet don't misinterpret this. Every time they get knocked out the hero receives additional danger tokens that make his life easier.

The cards are of the same quality as the cards in the base game. Idem for the miniatures which can and should be used in other gaming escapades once you paint them. I like the combo sci-fi/horror vibe, even though it is not something that has not been seen before.

The new rules are a piece of cake. You won't need more than five minutes to integrate the new expansion into your Alone experience.

The weak points: I wrote I in the review of the Alpha expansion and I will write it again: New characters for random scenarios are fine, yet shouldn't they have custom-made scenarios forming a cohesive campaign just like the four characters in the base game? I am not suggesting putting a new rulebook inside the box; posting the new scenarios on the publishers' website would have been enough, just to get a thematic treat. Alone fans surely deserve it.

I am rather disappointed by the lack of integration between this expansion and the Deep one. No guidance is provided about using both avatars and special creatures at the same time. Is it something so abominable that should never be explored? I would have preferred it if the short rulebook addressed the issue instead of ignoring it, even if to say no and explain why.

At EUR 25 the expansion comes as expensive for the new rules, the seven miniatures and the eight cards that you will use. What however makes this more pronounced is that it includes not eight but 40 cards, and you only get to use 20% of those. Multilingual editions of games are fine in principle, yet repeating even a handful of cards in numerous different languages is seldom a good idea. On the one hand, it is totally understood that a poor move from the publisher there might sink the game. On the other hand, nobody likes to pay for things he will not use. I wish both this expansion as well the Deep one were handled differently in that sense.

Unless you unceremoniously dump the miniatures in the base game's box, there is no way you can keep everything in one place. That is of course more of an issue of the base game's box, and not the expansion's. The bottom line is that this box stayed on my self to fully protect all the minis, something that I really wanted to avoid. Sigh. The lack of shelf space is not a joke. Many gamers depart from their games not necessarily because they don't play them, but because they cannot store them. Game lines should think about the future, no matter how many boxes they use when released.

Conclusion: I enjoyed Alone: Avatar Expansion both for the quality and thoughtfulness that the main new mechanic brought to the game, as well as the two new heroes who bring the fight back to the monsters. Admittedly however, it feels thin for that price, seeing how instead of a new campaign or additional fluff, one pays for cards he will not use.

For more info on Alone: Avatar Expansion, the Horrible Guild and Ares Games visit their respective websites at https://www.horribleguild.com and https://www.aresgames.eu.

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