Strategically Thematic: Adrenaline

Hi! This is Ambie from Board Game Blitz, and this is Strategically Thematic, a segment where I talk about theme in different strategic games. This time, I’m talking about Adrenaline.

Adrenaline is a board game that’s themed around a first person shooter video game, where players are different characters trying to pick up different weapons and ammos and shoot the other players and kill them to get points.

One of the main mechanisms of Adrenaline is Area Control. But instead of a typical Area Control where you’re trying to control different territories, in Adrenaline the territories are the other players. So whenever you shoot another player, you get your tokens on them and it shows that you’ve done damage to them. And whoever did the most damage gets more points when the player dies.

You could also get bonus points for overkilling a player which happens a lot in first person shooter video games.

There are a bunch of different weapons and ammo that you can pick up in the game, and they spawn at different points on the board just like in a video game. The weapons are represented by different cards and the ammo is represented by colored cubes. So each weapon needs certain colored cubes in order to load up the weapon. You can move around on the board and pick up weapons and ammo just like in a video game, and you have to spend your ammo in order to reload your weapon so that you can shoot.

Also the different weapons each have different powers which are thematic. Like, for example, the Tractor Beam allows you to pull an enemy towards you before shooting, and the Shotgun does a lot of damage but only if you’re close to the enemy. So if you get a couple of different weapons, you can combo them to make good attacks.

The name of the game, Adrenaline, also plays a part in the theme of the game, because when you get damaged, you end up getting more powerful because of the adrenaline you get after getting hurt.

All of these different mechanisms work really well together to bring the theme of a first person shooter video game to a board game form. I really enjoy playing Adrenaline trying to combo the different weapons together to get a really good shot off on someone, and to try to go for the overkill. 

Thanks for watching Strategically Thematic! Let me know what you think in the comments!

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