Social deduction dice game Burke’s Gambit sounds like Werewolf meets Alien

Can you even roll dice in the zero gravity of space? No matter, because social deduction-dice game hybrid Burke’s Gambit is here to bring all the terror and tension of sci-fi horror to your tabletop.

Sounding somewhat like a cross between social deduction tabletop classic Werewolf, seminal sci-fi horror flick Alien and recent space disaster movie Gravity, players are crewmembers of a space ship which has been infiltrated by a evil alien organism.

The organism has infected one of the crew, who has messed about with the ship’s engines and set it to collide with the Earth, in order to spread the organism among the planet-dwelling population. Just like in Alien, there are also members of the crew working for The Company, who want to protect the alien so it can be studied on Earth.

As the craft hurtles towards the planet, the crew attempt to discover which one of them is responsible for the impending disaster, in order to flush them out of the airlock before impact and save the world.

These social deduction mechanics are combined with dice-rolling gameplay, where the players – each cast with a specific role, such as captain, marine or comms officer – roll dice to heal themselves, attack the player they believe to be the alien or scan a player to check whether they are trustworthy. Engine power ups speed the descent to Earth, reducing the time left to figure out who should be ejected into space.

The box comes with 21 custom dice, 29 cards denoting job role, allegiance and more, 17 life counters and a rulebook. The US RRP is $20.