Co-operative tile-laying survival

🌊 Kalypso is an upcoming post-apocalypstic tile-laying survival game from Inside Up Games . I promised to talk a bit about how the co-operative versions works, so here we go! 🙂

I am often wary when games have multiple modes of play, but I can happily report that in Kalypso both work well. Competitive is a victory point contest, while co-op is purely about survival! And I am really glad about that! I was prepared for some kind of beat-your-own-score gameplay, but no, not at all! 😁

Each round there is array of things you have to take care of. 👇
First up, each of you gets an objective card 🎴 - if you don’t complete these, it is simply game over, instantly! 😱

Some survivors also arrive each round, raising the population. At the end of the round you have to be able to feed them all by having enough fish 🐟 (which you also have to spend down), and having enough gardens 🌱 (which is just a threshold). Each survivor also has to be allocated to a building so they have shelter. That’s not easy to do when you only get 4 tiles each to place in a round! 😵

And that’s just to survive. To win the game you also need to complete the two big objectives by the end of the 4th (final) round, which are randomly chosen in the beginning. You really have to focus in on these to stand a chance at completing them! ☝️

Luckily you can work together, give things to each other, and expand tiles placed by others too, so co-operation is big - and a necessity! As you reach lifebuoys on the map, you can also unlock Specialists: these provide 1 of 5 ongoing abilities which can help out big time, though of course they are also one more mouth to feed, but I do find some of these a must-have.

Co-operative is really well thought out (though some of the objectives are currently hard to understand). A few of the mechanics in competitive work differently in co-op, so they took the time to make it special. I enjoy how every single tile placement decision matters, because survival is so difficult!

The Kickstarter is still running for Kalypso, so if this sounds like a fun apocalypse to survive, then go check the game out in more detail over there! 😉