Live from GTS 2004: Sucking Vacuum doesn’t

Alien Menace is back in the swing of things with a revised version of Sucking Vacuum, which the company announced last week. The new boxed version is a gorgeous full-color product, with 18 tiles that are played to make the doomed International Space Station each player must escape from. Sci-fi fans will be thrilled by the upgraded version, as nearly every tile hides so many “Easter eggs” from popular TV shows and movies, gamers will spend the first hour examining the game boards and laughing at all the goodies they find. The Alien Incursion variant rules included in the box seem like they’ll turn an already solid, frantic, and entertaining game into a mad scramble for survival, and that’s for a game that was already about avoiding death by suffocation. With a compact, high-quality box, full-color components (and nifty plastic missiles to track oxygen with), and a price of $19.99, the new Sucking Vacuum is a sure winner. If this game doesn’t end up on Origins’ short list for Best Graphic Design of a Board Game, I’ll be extremely surprised.