Stats:
No. of players: 1-4
Amount of time to play: 45-60 min
Age requirements: 14+
Set-up time: 10 minutes

Level 7 Escape Rules Description:

Level 7 Escape is a semi-cooperative game with a sci-fi horror theme. You must escape a military facility where you have been captive. But it won’t be easy as there are guards and aliens looking to stop you.

To start the game you get two skills. These will give your character some advantages in certain situations. You begin with four adrenaline cards. These cards represent your health and may be played to gain bonuses to challenges or raise or lower your fear.

Your level of fear (from 1 to 8) can also alter your stats. If you are not very fearful you gain a bonus to your intelligence but a penalty to your fighting stat. If your fear is higher you gain bonuses to fighting. At the highest levels your fear gives you a bonus to your fighting and movement stats. Unfortunately when this high it also attracts extra aliens. Aliens on the map move toward the characters with the highest fear.

Your threat determines how the guards will react to you. The higher your threat the more you are pursued by guards.

On your turn you’ll move and take actions. You can move through two tiles or through the vents. If you move into an unexplored room you take a tile and place it. Some tiles have icons that detail what happens when they are discovered. After you discover a tile your turn is over. The actions you can take are: trade items, pick up an item or deal with a challenge. The first two actions are pretty self-explanatory. The types of challenges are attack, bull-rush, outwit and unlock a door. You roll a number of dice equal to the stat associated with the challenge type. If you roll enough icons that match the challenge stat you pass it. Attacking can knockout or even kill guards and aliens. You can bull-rush to move off a tile that has enemies on it. Outwit lets you sneak passed a tile with enemies on it. And you can unlock a door with brains or brawn.

Once you have explored a new tile or taken your actions, you draw an event card. It will tell you if you are to add a new guard or alien to the map, what event takes place and what enemies activate. When activating enemies attack characters on their tile or move toward their biggest target based on threat and fear. In some scenarios they may even see each other as the biggest target.

If you run out of adrenaline cards you are knocked out and lose any items you have. You awaken in the infirmary and can move into any tile with a vent. There are situations when you will not recover from being knocked out and are dead outright.

Level 7 is scenario based and the number of enemies, order and number of tile stacks and main goal are laid out in scenario booklet. You can play to help everyone escape or to just make sure you escape. It is your choice.

Quick Review of Level 7 Escape:

Level 7 Escape has an excellent theme and the feel of the game and mechanics match that theme well. This is a tense ride through a dark laboratory of death. You must manipulate your fear to suit the situation and your character. This game scales well and is fun whether you play it solo or with four players.

To escape you need to be smart and your decisions matter. If you fight too many guards you’ll quickly become a threat and they’ll chase you the rest of the game. You have to judge when it is best to fight and when to run. This is especially true when you are dealing with guards.

If you can manage things correctly you can get the aliens to be seen as the biggest threat while the guards have the most fear and attract the aliens. This allows you to roam the complex freely as your enemies seek to destroy each other.

The components for this game are high quality. The art looks great but can be a little dark sometimes. It is hard to complain too much about the colors as they add to the theme and experience of the game. The rule book looks great but you may need to refer to it often the first couple of games. I was flipping through it a lot the first two plays and wished it was easier to find things. I also wish there were detailed player aids and the box fit everything better too.

I really like the unique skills to make the characters individuals. Once we played that each player was dealt three and chose the two skills they wanted to keep. This can help you get skills that make sense together or hone one area of your character.

The way the adrenaline cards are used for health is clever. You may want (or need) to play a couple cards to pass a challenge. But if you play them your health will be lowered. You only gain back one adrenaline card each turn so you must be judicious about when you use your adrenaline cards.

Level 7 Escape is an intense game that delivers on theme and game play. If you want a more detailed look at the game play check out this video by Privateer Press. If you like cooperative games this should be a game you try out. If you like sci-fi or horror themed games Level 7 should be on your radar.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 2 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6