You see the vastness of space stretch out before you as you look out a window on the colony ship. Suddenly a piercing noise breaks the peace. The ship shakes as an explosion rocks it. The blue planet beneath you looms larger and larger as the ship hurtles toward the surface, crashing into the unknown.

A mission gone wrong. Tensions continued to mount aboard your colony ship as the days dragged on. An anonymous act of sabotage has sent the ship plummeting to the surface of a frozen, uncharted planet. Damaged beyond repair, the scattered remains will do little to protect you from the brutal cold.

Z-Man Games have announced Cryo, a new worker-placement game with dynamic engine-building from Tom Jolly and Luke Laurie, the creative minds behind The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire. In Cryo, two-to-four players are leaders of separate, hostile factions now competing to survive and claim control over the underground caverns on a remote icy planet.

Releasing this spring, Cryo will be available at an RRP of £59.99.

Salvage What You Can
Facing the challenge of this harsh new environment, it’s up to you to scavenge resources from the ship to survive. Players will oversee the survival efforts of their faction primarily through their engineering platform. From this platform you’ll send out your drones to the fractured sections of the ship, scavenging resources and rescuing the members of your faction still in cryostasis.

Your drones can collect four different materials from the wreckage and the surface of the planet: crystals, organics, tech, and nanites. As you recall your drones from the wreckage, you’ll be able to activate actions connected to a drone’s dock on the platform. Strategically adding the different resource tokens to the open slots on your platform will allow you to upgrade and customise it, fine-tuning new actions to suit your unique strategy for survival.

Settle Underground
To be victorious you’ll need to be clever and use the technology at your disposal. Technology cards will give you multiple options to choose from: upgrades, missions, or vehicles.

Upgrades, shown at the top of a card, will give you a special ability for the rest of the game. This special ability could give you the edge over your opponents.

Missions, shown on the left side of a card, are hidden objectives that will give your faction bonus points if completed.

Vehicles are added to the bottom of your engineering platform. These makeshift vehicles can hold your rescued crew, keeping them safe as you send them down to explore, settle, and control the habitable caverns below.

While the planet’s surface is frigid and dangerous, subterranean caverns provide a safer environment for long-term survival. As you explore deeper into the depths below the surface, you’ll discover new caverns to settle, each with their own requirements depending on their biome. Transporting your crew pods to the caverns and claiming your territory will be the highest priority for your faction to win.

Though unplanned, a new chapter for humanity has begun. Scavenge, build, explore, and lead your faction to victory within this frozen world before the sun sets!