Orion Trail (2015):

Orion Trail (2015):

“Dare to travel the absurd and dangerous Orion Trail, where only the luckiest, bravest, and most stubborn captains will make it all the way to the end. Become famously incredible or incredibly dead in this single player choose-your-own-space-adventure!”

The Star Trek parody game that mixes Oregon Trail with board games, and...well, Oregon Trail mechanics. The name of the game here is funny stuff happening. You start off by selecting 4 crew members (Officers) who will influence your stats (Diplomacy, Bravado, Tactics, Science, and Attack.) From there the game takes on resource management mechanics (Crew, food, fuel, and hull.) and works like a board game.

Each space you “move” takes fuel and food. Sometimes you'll have random encounters that will add or take away skills and resources (Lost your lucky underwear -1 Bravado. Took a martial arts class +1 attack, etc.) The meat of the game however is funny encounters when you get to planets. Whether it's dealing with annoying party aliens or the villainous “Underbaker”. Each scenario gives you a choice of how to proceed, with each solution using a stat.

For example, if you're dealing with the Underbaker, the attack solution is to blast him. The dialogue solution is to get him to cut a deal with you, the tactical solution is to get him talking, and disable his bakery, and the bravado solution is to steal his chef hat. Each one of these then turns into a probability out of 10. So, if you have 6 bravado, or whatever, 6 squares will be ok, 2 will be failure 1 will be complete failure and another will be complete success. Of course, the higher your stats, the more chances you have for success.

So, the game is all resource management and probability with comedy mixed in. Some of the events parody Star Trek directly like evil clone planets, and some parody other elements like Rogue AI, or a planet full of Michael Jackson Thriller zombies. Willy Wonka's factory and giant space malls are also part of it. Just make sure not to get lost in the giant space mall.

The goal of the game is to reach the space station at the end, where you receive your title based on how many successes or failures you had, and what stats you most used. For example, mostly successes will earn you the adjective “Admirable ____” So, if you used bravado, you'd be “Admirable Rule-Breaker”. Or “Unfortunate Scientist” if you used mostly science and got failures.

There are 6 missions (boards) to use, each one harder and longer than the next. I mostly like this game, since the emphasis is on probability and funny stuff rather than skill. I can always have a good time, even if my resources run out and we all die, at least it'll be funny. The same stuff kind of happens on every board, you get used to it after a while. But, there's enough random elements to keep me coming back. Check it out!