Last seen in these pages making the tabletop wargame world a gnarlier place with the daemonic Reign In Hell, Adam Loper and Vincent Venturella are back with Space Station Zero. Another miniatures-agnostic skirmisher, this time they’ve swapped the abyssal plains for an an unsurprisingly grim and indeed dark future, where you find yourself marooned, along with the crews of several other ships, at the titular derelict, an ancient and mysterious hulk drifting through the otherwise empty void.

So, Warhammer 40,000 - Kill Team set on board a Blackstone Fortress you might think and whilst that wouldn’t be an outrageously egregious description there’s a bit more to it than just that. First of all, and quite importantly, Space Station Zero is designed to be run as a co-operative or solo game. Yes you can just use the rules here to grab some minis off the shelf and engage in fire fights with your friends but the main thrust of the game is a narrative campaign focused on exploring the bowels of the titular space station, unlocking its many secrets and looting anything not bolted down.

Crew creation is a fairly simple affair, pick between four, six and eight crew members - the lower the number the stronger they are, decide between one of six archetypes such as explorers, pirates or merchants - each of which unlocks different specialists, give them a special ability to personalise them and a skip full of weapons and you’re good to go. Likewise the game itself keeps things fast and simple and doesn’t weigh itself down with too many rules, crew members have 5 stats, each of which equals the number of D12s they get to roll when something related to that stat goes awry. Generally speaking you’re looking to roll a number of evens, with natural 12s counting for two successes, all very easy to gets to grips with.

The game then plays out as a set of challenges that provide you with a bit of flavour text, details on how to set up and play any AI controlled enemies, terrain or special rules that apply for that particular level. Whilst most challenges see you coming up against some variety of robotic sentry or crazed mutant, that’s not all you have to contend with and there’s as much emphasis on environmental hazards such as deadly gas leaks, viral bombs, mutagenic spores and frankly not up to code space architecture.

Neither is the objective just to kill every thing in sight, though to be fair that will probably increase your chances of survival and each challenge comes with specific victory conditions that might include fixing parts of the crumbling space station, accessing a particular data node, defusing a bomb and so on. 

Once you’ve successfully navigated a challenge you’re then generally presented with a few different options of what path to take deeper into the core of this rotting death trap, given a chance to recover from injuries (or not as the case may be) and potentially level up any crew members who haven’t yet bled out, been turned into a mushroom person or otherwise come a cropper. As you progress through the campaign you’ll start to discover Space Station Zero’s secrets, revealed in a separate section at the back of the book, that provide mechanical benefits to your crew, poetic glimpses of the afterlife, and ultimately THE TRUTH about the setting.

The enemy AI is fairly rudimentary and crew customisation is relatively limited but the game has a tight narrative focus and if you like the idea of a fast paced, easy to pick up sci-fi dungeon crawl/wargame then Space Station Zero is a great way to get more use out of your minis, get a game or three in when no one else is around or just scratch that narrative wargaming itch.

Game design: Adam Loper, Vincent Venturella
Art: Will Kirkby
Published by Snarling Badger Studios

This feature originally appeared in Wyrd Science Vol.1, Issue 4 (April '23)

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