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One Minute to Stationfall
I don’t remember how it came up. Andy Mesa, the principal developer on Matt Eklund’s Stationfall, mentioned that this was the logical endpoint of all those fancy patented techs in Pax Transhumanity. I can see it. All these advances, yet we still cut corners on the station’s construction codes. This is a place where heavily armed security bots brush elbows with sentient chimps and telepathic rats, where botanists and schizophrenic doctors chase patents of their own via research most unethical, where a billionaire has taken up residence across the corridor from the maintenance clones. And it’s falling out of the sky.
That billionaire, by the way, is the source of Stationfall’s least-subtle but best joke. But to understand it, you first need to onboard some basics. And what better way to do that than by hearing the tale of the time my best buddy was kidnapped?
I Can’t Help Stationfalling in Love With You
I have a pet theory that board games are great at enabling humorous moments but terrible at comedy. Humorous moments are singular: a joke, a misstep, a callback. Comedy is sustained. That makes it harder because even a single flub can ruin the whole thing. Ever played a party game that was funny for a few minutes but quickly grew dull? Or something like Munchkin, with the occasional cutesy card but agonizing gameplay? It’s one thing to provide prompts and let players riff. Another entirely to keep the humor coming. There’s a reason funny games are usually short. They exist to enable humorous moments, not real comedy.
Hence my personal metric: It isn’t enough to be funny. A great comedy board game has to be funny even when you’re losing. By that metric, Matt Eklund’s Stationfall is the latest addition to my personal pantheon of games that never fail to make me laugh.
SPACE-BIFF! 