Preview: Survive: Political and Environment Editions

"Your identity as a spy has been outed. The people you've been spying on are out for blood and the agency you work for has sent agents to "tie up lose ends" Who amongst you will not survive this situation? This is the premise behind Survive: Political Edition from Survive LLC.

The Survive series of games has a lot of scenarios that ask "who amongst you will survive". Each version of the game is themed. I revived review copies of the Environment and the Political versions of Survive.

Survive's system is really simple and it makes for a lot of conversation about the topics brought up. Some of the topics are fairly absurd and some are very tough current events that will surely spark some debate amongst your gaming group. We played a few times at the local brewery and eventually got to the place where we were just reading the cards and having conversations about the topics.

To play the game you get out your favorite of the 6 decks that are going to be available in the Kickstarter. Those 6 are Environmental, Political, Medical, Religion, Workplace and Special. These are all topics that already have a lot of conversation to be had. Each player will start out with 25 lives. You will shuffle your deck and deal 3 cards to each player. If you are mixing multiple editions then you will deal 6 cards to each player. The oldest amongst you will go first. The player will read aloud a card from their hand and play it on the table. Every player including the one who just read the card will point to the person they think would die first in that scenario.

This is where things get interesting and people can change their votes after your friends impassioned speech.

Once your group has determined the most likely to die then they get to present a case on why they are not the most likely to die first. This is where things get interesting and people can change their votes after your friends impassioned speech. At the end the person with the most votes deducts as many lives as they got votes from their score. You can either play until one person has 0 lives or there is only one person with lives left.

We found the game insightful and interesting. The topics brought up usually were something that has a real world tie in. There were also a bunch of other random and fun topics that were a little less serious. This game will have you talking about life the rest of the night.

The Survive series of games are a great party style game that will get your game group, friends and family or even your coworkers talking. This game would be a great ice breaker at a corporate event or as we played a few friends at the pub. I recommend checking out the Kickstarter for Survive to get some great conversations going and discovering new things about the people you play with.

Players: 3-10

Year Published: 2022

Recommended Ages: 17+

Time to Play: 30 minutes

A preview copy of Survive Political and Environmental Editions was provided to Bert's Tabletop Games by Survive, LLC for review purposes and were returned after the review. This is a preview copy the final product may differ from what is depicted in this article.