Oh No, We Crashed! is one of those games that begs for a gag review. “Write the whole thing in as many minutes as it takes to play,” that sort of thing. Problem is, the game takes around two minutes. Maybe a little more. Maybe a little less. Regardless of the exact count, that’s less time than it takes to write an introduction, let alone an entire review. I’d pretty much have to cut it off right here.

Which would be a shame, because this little game is surprisingly delightful.

Our ship, surrounded by broken sections and the parts flung free on impact.

When you get right down to it, Oh No, We Crashed! is the tile-flipping portion of Galaxy Trucker or Fit to Print, minus even the ship-building or layout, uh, laying of those titles. Your ship, as you may have gleaned, has crashed. Oh no! Now it’s your task to find the right components to patch up your shuttle before the toxic atmosphere corrodes through your rebreather.

At its most basic, this is a simple task. There are color-coded components, three of which must be paired with one of your ship’s broken systems to repair it. These components are concealed face-down, requiring a sprint to flip the right components, slot them atop the right cards, and blast off. Accomplish this in time and you escape. Fail and… well. You know.

The problem is that Oh No, We Crashed! doesn’t stay at its most basic for very long. Two minutes, to be imprecise. That’s because Gilli Levy and Kundra Magnus, the game’s designers, imbue it with the gradual encluttering of Thomas Sing’s The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. Across ten scenarios, new wrinkles are added to the formula. Perhaps you’ll meet greedy aliens who must be fed a particular component before they leave you alone. Maybe you’ve crashed in darkness and can’t leave any components face-up on the table. Or maybe there’s a color inverter that transforms every pink button into a pink wire and vice versa. Now we’re getting devious.

Quick, gather the correct parts!

Before long — within about four minutes — the group develops its own shorthand. Those pink buttons and pink wires become “pills” and “confetti.” The green tiles become “RAM” and “no, the other RAM.” Wild cards, once they appear, become a topic of much jubilation. Later, their presence cannot be merely declared. A wild must be belted, hollered, screamed, often to the detriment of the careful, if rapid, assemblies elsewhere. WILD. I HAVE A WILD. WHERE DO WE NEED A WILD.

Shouting ensues. That goes without saying. It goes somewhat less without saying that other panic responses may occur. In one session, one of our players held his breath for the duration and grew lightheaded. It’s that kind of game. As in, you should probably already know how you’ll feel about it. Can you handle two minutes of frantic flipping? Are you good under pressure? Can you hold your breath for two minutes despite some light physical activity?

To be clear, Oh No, We Crashed! is nowhere near as generous with its scenarios as The Crew or any of the many games that have since sought to recapture its appeal. There are ten scenarios in all. Accumulated, that comes to twenty minutes. Maybe more. Maybe less. I mean, almost certainly more, since you’ll repeat some scenarios, and I’m not even accounting for setup and rules reading and all that. But twenty minutes of gameplay, thereabouts, plus however often you want to repeat those levels or try one of the later challenges that remixes the previous elements into new combinations.

How ONWC looks in motion.

But, look, that’s this thing’s appeal. It’s tiny. Yet for its size, it feels large. Which is fitting, since it’s about how large two minutes can feel. How large, yet how suffocating. Especially when you’re holding your breath.

A complimentary copy of Oh No, We Crashed! was provided by the publisher.

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