Escape the Dark Sector Review

A cooperative jailbreak that's never the same. In space.

Escape the Dark Sector is the successor to Escape the Dark Castle. In this, you are attempting to escape the space station that has taken your ship and taken you prisoner. You do this by flipping over chapter cards and doing whatever they say. Some are helpful, like getting new items or letting you heal but most are dangerous. This can be enemy encounters where you need to roll your dice and try to eliminate the threats as fast as you can and others can be skill checks where you need to roll a specific symbol or else you may take damage. If you can make it to the final boss and defeat them, then you win and you recover your ship and go home. If anyone dies, the game is over and you all lose.

The Good: I absolutely love the art and components to this game. The black and white theme works so well for this sort of game. It's incredibly thematic. It's always fun to throw big chunky dice around and hope for the best. I also think that the health tracking is done in a really unique and interesting way. You are given a sheet of paper and you draw a line based on how much health you lose or gain. I've never seen this done in a game before.

The Okay: Some of the rules were a bit confusing. Specifically around combat. It took me a while to get the swing of things and understand what the cards were asking. I'm still not confident that I understood the ranged combat. There is also a lot of luck involved because you need to roll a specific set of symbols that may or may not appear. There are cards that allow you to modify or re-roll but you still need to hope to have one of those cards.

The Not So Good: Because of how random this game is with setup, you never know what sort of game you'll be getting into when you start. This is not a bad thing, but if you shuffle in a bad set of cards, then things can go badly very quickly for you. In one game I played, I was doing really well and then I drew 3 or 4 cards in a row that drained my health and killed me with nothing I could do.

Overall: 7.5/10

I really enjoyed Escape the Dark Sector for what it is. It's an interesting sci fi experience that's different every single time. It's meant to be a cooperative game but I honestly don't know if it's something that I would want to play with other people. I only played solo and to me at least, that felt like the way it should be played. Maybe that's the introvert in me, who knows, but if you're in the market for an immersive storytelling experience then Escape the Dark Sector should absolutely be on your radar. If space isn't your thing, then Escape the Dark Castle may be more up your alley.

Thank you to Themeborne for providing me a review copy.