Matthew BaileyGame 8 of our “Halloween Half-term Spooktacular” is…
“It’s Alive: Monster-Making Mayhem,” played by myself, Jack (.8.), and Toby (5).
“It’s Alive: Monster-Making Mayhem” (or “It’s Alive,” as I’ll refer to it from now on) is a straightforward set collection card game where your objective is to assemble six pieces of a monster’s body and then attempt to bring it to life.
At the outset, each player holds six cards in their hand. On your turn, you select a card either from the draw pile or the discard pile, maintaining a hand of six cards at the end of your turn.
The primary goal is to obtain a set of six cards, all of the same colour, corresponding to the six different parts of the monster’s body. There is a fair degree of luck involved in what you draw. Before we delve into other game elements, it’s worth noting that this is relatively passive, and often involves each player taking a card from the pile and subsequently discarding it when it’s not of use.
Once you have all six pieces, you lay them out and roll a die, hoping for a lightning symbol (with a one-in-three chance). Rolling a lightning brings your monster to life, securing your victory. If you don’t roll lightning, you have to keep rolling the dice on your following turns until you do while the other player tries to catch up, which can become quite tedious.
To add an element of complexity, there are various powers that you can acquire by randomly drawing cards from the deck. These powers range from potent to utterly game-breaking, including:
- “Mismatch 2-Tone,” which allows you to use two colours instead of one, a pretty powerful ability.
- “Mismatch Monster,” which permits you to use any colour you want, completely game-breaking.
- “Lightning,” allowing you to skip the dice roll stage at the end, a reasonably powerful ability.
- “Sabotage,” forcing your opponent to discard their entire hand and draw six fresh cards, again, a completely game-breaking ability that can derail your opponent’s entire game.
- “Destroyer” and “Thief in the Night,” which allow you to destroy and steal other power cards, respectively.
In case you haven’t already surmised, I do not have a high opinion of this game. The set collection aspect lacks excitement, as there is no drafting involved. You simply flip over cards one at a time until you obtain something that sort of works. Additionally, several of the power cards are overwhelmingly game-breaking, effectively turning the game into a race to draw the most powerful card first. When you do manage to create your monster, you can then find yourself at the mercy of unfortunate dice rolls. Jack experienced this when he rolled seven clouds in a row, allowing me ample time to try and win.
The game offers minimal decision-making opportunities, and the mechanics are tiresome, while the action cards are incredibly unbalanced.
Its a shame as I feel there is a good little card game in here and as you can see from the pics Jack enjoyed his first game (I always photograph the first game and then we usually play a few more times without me messing about with a camera) but on subsequent playthroughs the cracks showed.
It also isn’t clear in the rules what power cards can be used by the other player once you have the monster laid out on the table. Can I still sabotage? Who knows?
In terms of component quality, it’s passable. The box is slightly larger than necessary but comes with a decent plastic insert. The card stock is satisfactory, and the dice, while unusually small, serves its function. However, these attributes don’t redeem a game that simply lacks enjoyable gameplay.
Unfortunately, I 100% cannot recommend this game… at all.
