The Crew

This is a fun cooperative card game with some interesting game mechanics that keep it interesting. It is a card game, and as such there is a strong random element involved (shuffling two different decks), so even though you are repeating the same “mission” it is never the same.

I grew up playing competitive trick-playing card games, but I'd never played a cooperative one before. I was a little skeptical at first, but this turned out to be loads of fun. Although the outer-space theme is a little bit silly, the game mechanics themselves are very well-thought out. Some of the tasks require a lot of thought to work out, and the rule against "table talk" with the other players adds an interesting twist to the cooperative-game genre. In fact, that rule is really helpful in combatting one of the main weaknesses of cooperative board games -- in games like Pandemic, the game can be essentially taken over by one dominant player who tells the other players what to do, but in this game every player is required to make their own decisions. I've played this with a couple of different groups of family members, and we've all thoroughly enjoyed it.