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Ludology 258 - Fun with Facehuggers

58 min • 5 september 2021

Scott sits down with Erica, Gil, and Sen to discuss the design and making of his newest game, Alien: Fate of the Nostromo. We also discuss designing to an IP, and how to make a horror game.

SHOW NOTES

0m58s: The original Alien film

1m31s: The other board game based on the film Alien. Scott is not counting board games influenced by the film without the official license, like Nemesis or The Awful Green Things From Outer Space. He’s also only counting games based specifically on the original film, so board games based on any of the sequels, like Aliens, or Alien vs. Predator, do not count.

1m38s: The “Optimus Prime Conundrum” is a term coined by the legendary and wonderful podcast Flip the Table. It describes a situation where a game breaks the IP it’s based on by allowing multiple copies of one character. This was coined in their very first episode, in which they reviewed the Transformers Adventure Game, where each player gets to play a separate version of Optimus Prime.

2m00s: The publisher Ravensburger. Note that Scott pronounces it “Ray-vensburger”, while the other hosts pronounce it “Rah-vensburger”.

3m34s: The films Elf, Home Alone, and Gremlins, and the animated series Gargoyles.

8h25m: The Topps Alien trading card set.

11m15s: The Betrayal games.

14m11s: Back to the Future: Dice through Time.

16m06s: The film Ten Little Indians, also known as And Then There Were None. There have been several versions of this film, all based on an Agatha Christie novel.

28m59s: Scott is correct in that Alien is the first film to provide a genuine “cat scare” - that is, a jump scare that turns out to just be a harmless cat. The so-called “cat scare,” in which the source of a jump scare turns out to be something ordinary, appeared 35 years before Alien. TV Tropes credits it to producer Val Lewton, in his 1942 film Cat People. However, despite the film’s name, the source of the scare was a bus, not a cat. Note that one month after Alien’s wide release in the US, The Amityville Horror came out; it also featured a cat-powered “cat scare.” Perhaps between these two films, the cliche was solidified.

34m15s: The Horrified games: Horrified and Horrified: American Monsters. A short checklists of cryptids: Bigfoot, Mothman, Windigo, and the Jersey Devil.

36m39s: Camp Grizzly

37m17s: Clue/Cluedo, 1313 Dead End Drive

39m19s: Dread

39m51s: Kingdom: Death Monster

41m03s: Peter Jackson's "splatstick" film Braindead (released in North America as Dead Alive)

42m49s: Dixit, Weird Stories, Unspeakable Words

44m03s: Final Girl

45m05s: Mansions of Madness

47m47s: Geoff's book Achievement Relocked, Ico, Death Stranding, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Aerith from Final Fantasy VII

49m15s: Nyctophobia, Ten Candles, Vampire Hunter, Waldschattenspiel/Shadows in the Forest

51m39s: Apocrypha, the World of Darkness series of games (including Vampire: The Masquerade)