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Another The Thing board game has scuttled onto Kickstarter

Great to assimilate.

Flush out the alien organism hiding among you or assimilate and destroy in The Thing: The Board Game, the latest tabletop game based on the cult horror film, now live on Kickstarter.

First announced in 2018, The Thing: The Board Game is an upcoming game that sees four to eight players attempting to survive on a desolate outpost in the middle of a frozen tundra. However, the harsh weather conditions and freezing cold are not the only things to be worried about.

Hidden amongst the crew is a ravenous alien organism desperate to live. The alien organism can change its appearance to look like one of the game’s characters and can pretend to be performing actions to help the crew. It’s up to all the other players to root out which of them is acting falsely and destroy the alien player.

Cover image for YouTube video

The Thing: The Board Game has players moving around a board and ensuring that they have enough fuel and food in order to survive long enough for help to arrive. In the movie board game, players need to play cards in order to perform certain actions, such as feeding the base generator and boiler. However, a player can lie about what action cards they’re actually playing - which will be revealed whenever the current game’s leader goes to flip the cards in the action deck.

If players believe a member of the group is acting strangely, they can make accusations in the leisure room to increase their level of suspicion. If a player has enough suspicion placed upon them, they will be forced to reveal which action card they actually intend to play that round. Eventually, players will be able to perform a blood, fire or wire test to determine whether a certain player is the alien or not.

The survivors win the horror game if they either successfully destroy the alien or escape the outpost with at least some of them left alive. The alien player wins if they assimilate and kill every single one of the other player characters.

The Thing: The Board Game artwork alien 2

The Thing: The Board Game is being published by Pendragon Game Studio, the company behind the 2016 hidden movement game Last Friday, inspired by the genre of slasher films made popular during the 1980s. Co-designing the game are Giuseppe Cicero and Andrea Crespi, co-creator of Potion Explosion and survival horror game Alone.

There has already been a board game adaptation of John Carpenter’s horror film called The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31. Published by Mondo Games in 2017 and designed by Joe Van Wetering, Infection at Outpost 31 is a hidden role game that sees players managing their supplies and clearing out the base, all whilst one of them is only pretending to be a human. A board game based on the short story that The Thing was adapted from, Who Goes There, also launched a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2017, raising $612,776.

The Thing: The Board Game is currently on Kickstarter until October 14th, with a pledge of €79 (£73) getting backers a core copy of the game set to arrive in December 2021.

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About the Author
Alex Meehan avatar

Alex Meehan

Senior Staff Writer

After writing for Kotaku UK, Waypoint and Official Xbox Magazine, Alex became a member of the Dicebreaker editorial family. Having been producing news, features, previews and opinion pieces for Dicebreaker for the past three years, Alex has had plenty of opportunity to indulge in her love of meaty strategy board games and gothic RPGS. Besides writing, Alex appears in Dicebreaker’s D&D actual play series Storybreakers and haunts the occasional stream on the Dicebreaker YouTube channel.

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