The Thing

A paranoid survival game set at an isolated Antarctic research outpost in 1982. One player secretly controls a parasitic shapeshifter; the other players share control of the outpost’s human crew and their twelve character cards. Play revolves around six asymmetrical card decks (three for each side), a shared encounter deck divided into three acts, and hand management to determine when to deploy each deck. Humans assign crew to tasks, resolve film-inspired encounters like autopsy, blood testing, and exploring the Norwegian base, and try to prioritize limited actions to uncover and stop the infection. The hidden-information mechanic lets the shapeshifter place real or fake infection tokens under human characters and silently convert players, driving suspicion and social deduction as the game progresses.

Players: 2–4 best 4
Playing time: 45 min
Age: 18+
Complexity: 2.5 / 5