I was able to playtest this system a few times and loved it. It's very versatile in terms of setting. From feudal Japan to the western frontier, Heroes and Hardships can adapt. The dice system may take a few tries to get used to, but once you do, it is fast-paced and easy to use. The AP system allows everyone to engage in combat easily without waiting half an hour for their turn. The layout of the book is intuitive, and anything you need to know can be readily found.

I was a playtester for this system. If you are paging through and thinking "this is nothing like D20", you are correct. The rules are original and therefore take a bit of mental effort to absorb. However, I highly recommend putting in that effort and giving it a go. I think this system results in more realistic play, and combat is SO much more engaging than what you are probably accostomed to! Tracking Action Points requires more keeping up with than 5e initiative, but the flow is quick and allows for very cinematic feeling encounters. It has been designed with all genres and settings in mind, and I look forward to playing through the more advanced rules as they are released.

RPGObjects has a long history of exceptional products and The Right to Live is one of them. What makes The Right to Live work as a module is that it provides a template for how Abandon All Hope adventures should function - by experiencing it, both players and GMs get a strong idea of what an Abandon All Hope adventure should be.

In case you're not familiar with Abandon All Hope, it tells the story of a massive prison ship that passed through an "evil" section of space and became infested with demonic presences and Satanic evil. Its inspirations include Event Horizon, and, of course DOOM. The player characters were incarcerated on the vessel and now must survive as ships systems break down, are seized by various evil factions, or are corrupted by the devil. It catches what makes survival horror compelling - this is an environment in which even the air you breathe can't be taken for granted. The Right to Live shows the precariousness of existence on board the prison vessel, as well as showing the oncsequences of various types of approaches to the evil that has come aboard.

The player characters are thrust into a conflict between two prison gangs, a conflict that has been exacerbated by their reactions to the demonic presence. Each feels they have the best way of protecting themselves against it, and that the other is interfering in those efforts. And even by the end of the adventure it isn't clear which of them (if any) are right or wrong (if those words can be said to apply here) about the situation they're in. Nevertheless they're committed to the conflict and the player characters must navigate it.

If there's an area where The Right to Live could be improved, I would say that expanding on the consequences both of player character action and NPC action would help. The situation the PCs come to has arisen as the consequence of certain NPC decisions; what happens after the PCs come in and take action? You could certainly spool out the consequences of even relatively minor decisions out of control as both the opposing gang(s) and the demonic presence respond to even small changes to the situations at times. Finally, although The Right to Live emphasizes the precariousness of the situation from a social perspective, it could use a little more in the way of system breakdowns and shortages.

Abandon All Hope is a classic horror game because it understands the nature of a horrific situation. The Right To Live is a strong entry in the series.

I had my first game of AAH yesterday night, using the Seeds of Rage adventure, you can read the review elsewhere..

Ok, my love for the premise of the setting was spot on so I bought it in the fly. And it delivers.

The PC creation system: its good. Fast and manages to strike the key elements to make characterful PC.

The system: is fast and enjoyable. The "gauge" sytem of despair, guilt and insanity gives also a lot of flavour and is a great tool for roleplaying too.

The setting: the premise, as I said before, is great. The book describes several gangs, all of them fairly typical as well as general sections of the ship, robots and demons. All in all its useful information but personally I will go for a more psycological approach for the evil creatures (think of games like Kult) and I changed the robots to somethinng more "ghostly" like. Im used the great manga Blame as inspiration, you should check it out because it creates a great mood for this game.

The artwork is kind of mediocre and does little to set the mood, the gear is OK tough, the demons are kind of silly.

All in all, its a good solid product for its price, with a great idea and a great system to implement it. I'd reccomend it to a creative GM willing to use this as a framework to develop his own ideas

Seeds of Rage is an introductory game for Abandon All Hope. This is a playtest review because I had the chance to play the game yesterday night.

The Good: The adventure is good to introduce players to Gehenna and get your campaign started.

The Bad: The adventure is little more than a dungeon crawl.

The ugly: The adventure has several inconsitencies that the GM needs to work around.

To begin with, the game is great, the premise seduced me almost instantly and my players did like the idea of playing criminals..what happened later was unexpected to them. They had lots of fun dealing with sugar daddy and trying to scam him to break into Slag's cell while he was on the infirmary. They are also intrigued with whats happening because I kept all information to a minimum.

I do plan on buying the other adventures but Im afraid of what they will be. For a sci-fi terror game I was expecting somethig different than a dungeon crawl. There are some interesting moments, yes, but the master will need to be creative to make them special.

About the inconsistencies, some things let me kind of thinking and I needed to work them around. Some of theme did make the adventure better (in my taste)

About the demons: Its kind of ironic, but the main book says that you need to "keep down the number of demons and use as much human foes as possible". Yet in this adventure most foes are demons. In my play session I kept that to a minimim; they only heard an "inhuman howl" and the final foe (Slag). Keeping the suspense of whats going on in the ship made the adventure a lot more intriguing. After the first session they dont know exactly whats going on. And when they heard the howl, they got really scared!

Weird assumptions: My group did not manage to meet the Doctor, an interesting encounter. But I did find that NPC, who is supposed to tell "the truth" to the PCs weird. I mean, jumping to the conclusion that "oh yes we are in Hell and all this creatures are demons, and some of the are of guilt" seems to me like something a bit deus ex machina, I dont think that jumping to that conclusion would be so easy.

Time lapses: This one thing unsettled me but I worked around with time elipsis; if you stick to the written adventure, it feels like Perdition happens and all kind of things happen very, very fast, illogically fast just for the sake of the scenario. Its kind of illogical that an adventure that takes place in one day or two details events that would logically need more time to develop.

All in all, I would have given a 2.5 if possible. Unless your group loves dungeoncrawls the adventure will need a lot of work and tweaking to be enjoyable, and if you do like dungeoncrawls probably you will prefer another game anyway. Even tough this negative comments, the game is enjoyable, the premise great and my players do look forward keep finding and discovering whats going on. If they had discovered it on this very first adventure a lot of the charm of the game would be lost.

Continuing the ongoing saga of survivors aboard the mammoth prison-ship Gehenna, this adventure takes your band of convicts through treacherous areas, be they chilly parts of the vessel or picking their way through the complex relationships forming and reforming amongst various gangs struggling for power. As there are some recurring individuals, it will help if you have run previous episodes that have been published for at least one character in your current game, but each adventure is mostly stand-alone, and you may well have done other things in between.

Whilst looking for a safe place to hole up for the night, the characters encounter someone that they might well have met before, rooting around in a computer system. No innocuous hack (is there such a thing?) but part of a massive ongoing plot to take control, the thwarting of which provides the plotline for this adventure. Some quite massive assumptions are made concerning how the characters might go about that, but there's sufficient information given about what is going on for you to cope if they decide not to torture the person it's assumed they will capture rather than kill. (It's fair to say that my players probably would, and without the handy ready-reference that's supplied to show to more reluctant individuals!). Just in case they baulk, someone else is watching what is going on and can provide at least some of the information that's needed to move matters on.

Throughout this adventure, there are plenty of options - encounters that can be resolved by brawling or by talking, events that can be watched or interfered with, and so on. Care has been taken so that irrespective of the choices made, it's likely that all but the completely disinterested are going to pick up what is happening (and they are the most likely to end up dead, anyway!). As if picking your way through sometimes complex alliances was not enough, there is plenty of physical peril in this part of the ship as well. Flooded areas, leaked chemicals, extreme cold... and the odd addict roaming the corridors looking for his next fix, not to mention the odd monster that quite fancies gobbling them up.

If inter-gang rivalry is not enough, the characters also have the opportunity to take sides in internal conflicts and leadership contests. There are also new places to explore and new alliances to be made. And there's something far, far worse... something that actively latches on to at least one character and preys on their guilt about their past... and about which I'll say no more in case someone who plays in this adventure happens to read the review!

There is a lot to explore, a lot to interact with, a lot to survive, within these pages. An adventure that will keep players busy, whatever approach they bring to the game - curiousity, an urge for combat or a desire to interact. Well up to the standard of earlier adventures in this line, and a fitting showcase for this unusual and innovative game.

The cataclysm that has befallen the prison ship Gehenna may have brought out the best in some (like, we hope, your characters) but for others it has given free reign to their most base and dark desires. This scenario tells of an encounter with some of these lost souls... and as a result should be approached with caution and an eye to the sensibilities of your players - true for any horror game, but particularly so when twisted perversion raises its ugly head. It's designed to be run as a stand-alone adventure, perhaps a side trip from your main plot arc.

We start by meeting the four key NPCs, a motley group who - like the characters - have survived the cataclysm of Perdition by banding together and establishing for themselves a safe haven. Safe for themselves, that is: those 'invited' to visit will have a different opinion, for these people have put some virtual reality chambers - similar to the 'holodeck' of Star Trek fame - to perverted and unpleasant uses.

The adventure depends on the characters choosing to answer a plea for help. If they ignore it, it would be possible to devise an alternate way to use the materials here, but nothing is suggested. Once they've agreed to help, there's a large complex - different from anything encountered before, and probably unfamiliar to most even pre-Perdition - to explore before they meet those main NPCs and the 'fun' begins. Everything in this exploration phase is described clearly and atmospherically, giving no hint of what lies further on. This descriptive phase comprises Chapter 1 of the scenario, and could be used if you decide to repurpose the complex, perhaps as a base for the characters, even if you decide not to delve into the unpleasantness that occurs here in the adventure itself.

Chapter 2 presents a transition, as the characters find out what is in store. The plot is linear at this point, and care must be taken to ensure that the characters feel railroaded but their players do not! And so, on to Chapter 3 when the fun and games begin. Here there are several 'settings' that characters will have to survive, but once they have realised the single way to crack them, it is reasonably straightforward, provided the dice cooperate - you may wish to rely more on your players' role-playing skills than the sometimes mechanical approach suggested. But if atmosphere and suspense are built up well - and you have the resources to do this provided clearly - these situations, although obviously artificial - should prove good and scary.

In some ways this is a brilliant adventure, given the setting in which it occurs. From the role-playing point of view it's far too linear, but with a good GM who has taken the time to understand it fully, and who works hard at atmosphere and suspense, it could make for a memorable game.

Continuing on the theme of exploration and survival in a vast automated prison-starship that's fallen through a rift into an unspeakably horrible dimension, in this adventure the characters explore a section of the ship originally designed for housing the criminally insane... only now it seems that more than the inmates have gone completely crazy!

Whilst one might expect that a bunch of the criminally insane would, if let loose unsupervised, set about killing each other with enthusiasm, this is not a mere wander through a spectaularly awful bloodbath. Sure, it is not safe and most of the place operates on a 'kill or be killed approach' but there's more... and this is what the characters will have to discover if they harbour desires to get out alive.

This begs the question: why should the characters visit the insane asylum in the first place? If starting a new campaign, they could begin as inmates who are now free but need to find a way to survive, but if you are already running a campaign it is harder to explain. The suggested hooks for existing campaigns are either that the characters are chased into this area by hostiles - and soon come to wish they'd stopped to fight instead - or that they hear that odd things are going on and decide to investigate. Once you've got them in, however, there's plenty for them to do and places to explore.

The layout is quite non-standard compared to the rest of the ship. Each location is well-described in atmospheric terms, with those little touches that help bring it all to life, and with plenty of information for the GM about what will or might happen when the characters arrive, and how those already there will react to them. Naturally most are completely mad, and the GM will need to be prepared to babble nonsense, giggle and otherwise role-play insanity to portray them to best effect. As many of the inmates resent intruders, characters may also decide to pretend to be insane...

If you think this all sounds crazy, there is more to come as the characters penetrate deeper into the complex and encounter even more extraordinary madness of... well, demonic origin. Reality itself will warp around them, and if you are the sort of GM who really likes to mess with people's heads, there is plenty of scope for that here. A puzzle of epic proportions based around a madman's mind, which must be figured through to reach a maze in which the controlling entity is to be found. Even if, as is likely given the way in which it's all presented, the characters get there, they may well still be baffled... players who like an element of wierdness ought to enjoy this, but if yours prefer concrete defined challenges best defeated with the use of force, this adventure may not be to their taste.

Run with attention to atmosphere and sensitivity to the intent to disturb, this has the potential to bring home the essential wierdness of what has befallen the Gehenna prison ship and all those aboard her... it is an unusual scenario, strange and compelling. If pushing boundaries and exploring beyond the limits of normality appeal, consider running it.

This adventure is set in the times just after Perdition, the cataclysmic event that thrust the prison-ship Gehenna into places it certainly ought never to have gone, releasing horrific entities that for want of a better name have been called 'demons' by the convicts unlucky enough to meet them. It can follow from the events in Seeds of Rage but works perfectly well on its own.

It centres around the establishment of not just a safe haven but a group with the intention to fight back against the evil that is attacking the ship and all those aboard. Needless to say, it is not just the 'demons' who object, there are factions aboard who also seek to destroy such a sanctuary... hence the need to defend it will arise. Thus the course of this adventure includes exploration and construction, political manoeuvering for those characters interested in leadership roles and a massive climactic brawl.

For those who did not play (or did not survive) Seeds of Rage, suggestions are given for how to start the adventure in a logical and believable manner. Now one matter must be touched upon, that of gender. As you'd expect, the convicts were segregated according to whether they were men or women, and all material presented so far has tended to assume that the characters will be male. With everything breaking down, that's going to change and the sexes will be able to mingle, and opportunities for those who like to play female characters will become available. Indeed the very first scene of this adventure involves meeting a female convict (and assumes that the characters who encounter her are men!). It's a tough place, and young or prudish players may be advised to seek another game.

Following this encounter the characters meet with those who are busy establishing a place of safety and are able to join them. Well-presented and atmospheric, this section gives the impression that matters will progress apace with or without your characters, but it does rather presuppose what they will choose to do. OK, so banding together with other organised and determined people is the sensible, rational thing to do at this point, but...

Assuming that the characters do decide to settle here, or at least remain for a while, the settlement of Sanctuary is described in considerable detail, certainly enough for it to be used as a base of operations. Again atmospheric, with plenty of people busy establishing their own roles and places, whatever the characters choose to do, plenty of scope for interaction here. There are plenty of ideas provided to help you get them embedded into Sanctuary life too, a chance to use their skills and abilities to improve the place... and their reputation within it. With a group which enjoys interaction and creative activity, you can spin this section out, and return periodically to it.

For those who prefer a bit more action or who enjoy exploring, there's a need for people to patrol and scavenge as well. Plenty of nice dark and damp passages are provided, along with encounters and finds along the way, to give you the idea: more of the same can be devised if the characters really enjoy this segment of the adventure. There is a lot to discover, and this ought to appeal to those players who enjoy exploring or even traditional 'dungeon crawl' games. It also sets the scene well, many different things going on in the background or becoming important should they choose to investigate more deeply.

Back at Sanctuary, things have also been developing apace. There is political turmoil, a leadership struggle, against the backdrop of news of a large force advancing in this direction with hostile intent. Several candidates for command of the group present themselves, plus it's open to any character to do so as well if they so choose. A fairly complex but workable system is presented to determine the winner of the election: the interesting point being that even if no characters stand, the result is by no means predetermined - there are good and bad outcomes laid out in event of any of the NPC candidates winning, whilst if a character does so, it's up to them!

And so on to the climactic battle itself. Basically this is a mass-action brawl, but given the nature of the environment there is plenty for each individual character to get involved in. The course of events is laid out clearly, with everything that you need to run them smoothly. There's a neat tracking method to enable you to determine the relative strengths of attackers and defenders during the entire course of events, too. The outcome is surely not certain, but it is clear that the battle will be desperate and hard-fought, but with plenty of opportunity for the characters to make a difference. Mass combats are quite hard to pull off in a role-playing game, but this one has the potential to be an exciting climax to the adventure provided you stay calm and work through it methodically.

Overall this is an exciting adventure with opportunities for many styles of play, although it tends to assume that the characters will go along with the plot and the final battle is unavoidable and all-encompassing, however much a less-violent character may try to stay out of the way. It's one of the best presented, best laid out 'mass battles' for a normal adventure that I've seen for a while, with a series of episodes in which the characters' actions have the potential to make some difference to the outcome. As a follow-on to the previous published adventure, it's excellent; if you have not run that with your group, there is still scope to incorporate it within your campaign.

(It would be 4.5 stars were that feasible!)

This adventure has been designed purposely as an introduction - as far as player-characters are concerned - to the setting and initial events of Abandon All Hope, beginning as convicts on a prison ship heading out goodness knows where and encountering things that will make the toughest minds crack. However, as an introduction, the events in the adventure begin before the strange events, known as Perdition, start - the characters will experience its first manifestations in all their terror.

So, the adventure opens with some background setting of the scene, and then begins what appears to be another normal day - the convicts have been here for nearly 2,000 days already so by now things have settled into a routine. As events occur, any die rolls necessary for resolution are explained, helping introduce playes to the system as well as their characters to their situation.

Then, of course, things get worse. The event that ultimately becomes known as Perdition occurs. The ship seems to be almost falling apart around the characters' ears. Events pile upon events, a claustrophobic maelstrom of fires and debris and trapped men - and worse - through which the characters must struggle to survive.

It is a fairly linear adventure, although it is possible to present it in such a way that it is not apparent to the players. This is also one of those games where it is far more fun for players who do not know what is going on... pick one member of your group to be the GM and leave them to it, rather than have more than one take turns at running this particular game. But the adventure itself is atmospheric and capable of generating a horrific, scary, claustrophobic episode to get your campaign underway.

Reads very well and suggests strong possibilities for its setting. Considering that it's an ungoverned maximum-security prison, stranded in space, with extradimensional horrors, the author does well not to make it unrelentingly grim or incomprehensibly warped, but instead use lighter, less threatening scenes, uninvolved characters, rising tension and occasional release to set off the really bizarre and scary parts.

You might think that it was bad enough to be locked up on an automated spaceship and sent off on a one-way journey to an unknown destination in the company of people even nastier than yourself... but that's only the start of it. Science-fiction meets horror meets prison drama in this game - and digging a tunnel to freedom is not an option.

Chapter 1: History sets the scene, explaining the political, historical and societal changes on Earth that have led to the development of this rather drastic solution to the age-old question of what do you do with those people too mad, bad or inconvenient to fit in to normal society. Based on rather dodgy psychological theory, people were assessed for their potential to commit violent crime and those deemed most likely to become violent got locked away before they even had a chance to do something wrong. Naturally, that led to rather a lot of prisoners and the need to find somewhere secure to put them - a massive completely-automated colony ship that's been pointed off towards an unexplored direction of space and set going, containing some ten million convicts, a few thousand robots and an AI called the Warden in charge of the lot. Now if you just wanted a science-fiction prison drama, you could stop there, but no. This ship, the Gehenna, has encountered some kind of anomaly that has flipped him into another dimension, a distorted one full of unimaginable strangeness and horror... and one which has damaged both structure and control mechanisms of the Gehenna so that he too is coming apart.

Next, Chapter 2: Characters provides the systems necessary to create characters for the game. It's very freeform and wide-ranging, empowering players to decide exactly who they are and why they ended up part of the prison population. To start with, a 'Convict Identification Number' is rolled, a randomly-generated 7-digit number by which the individual is known to shipboard systems. As well as being an ID, it is used to determine (from a table) whether a character is an 'old lag' with plenty of prison time served or has been incarcerated recently and has little experience of life behind bars. Note that this is nothing to do with whether or not you deserved to be banged up... but it does have a profound effect on your character, as your attributes are rolled up using different tables depending on how long you've been in prison. There are six of these attributes - Prowess, Reflexes, Wit, Willpower, Social and Intimidation - covering the usual abilities attributes do: more interesting are the 'Guages.' These are based on the psycho-social theories that have arisen in this setting, a measure of the character's ongoing psychological state (and which landed him in this situation in the first place!). Called Despair, Guilt and Insanity, they vary during play according to circumstances that affect the character and the choices that they make.

Once these have been determined, by die rolls on tables, you then get a bunch of Build Points with which to equip your character with Traits - his abilities, the things that he can do and knows about. You also need to decide on the character's Conviction Record (and this may affect some of the Traits available to you). While these are broadly-defined - murderer, vice offender, dissident or anarchist - there is scope for you to define it in as much detail as you wish, much of this impacting on character Traits as well as aiding you in role-playing the character once the game begins. Note that 'murderer' includes those who served in the armed forces of former nation-states prior to the current regime's rise while 'anarchists' include those with such dangerous ideas as religious belief as well as the sort of thugs you might normally picture when you hear these terms. Many of the traits listed are things your character learned in prison, or which prove useful - including an impressive collection of prison-specific martial arts styles! Each character also needs to select a Personal Goal, which is known only to the player and the Warden (GM), as well as driving the storyline at times and giving a focus to your role-playing, it also can bring bonus Build Points when your actions in-game serve to further your goal. Finally, creation of a back-story is encouraged, not just for the normal role-playing reasons but to give the Warden inspiration when devising personal and psychological challenges to throw into what is intended to be an intense game.

Character created, we next come to Chapter 3: Contraband. This covers items legitimately in possession as well as those that would be disapproved of, did anyone in authority know you had them... and that universal currency, smokes! Yes, even in the far-distant future, people still puff away, and - in prisons - trade cigarettes for other items of value. Many items are basic, while others are improvised. Weapons are, given the environment, hard to obtain but there's quite a variety from stolen riot control gear to 'home-made' shivs and clubs. There's also a range of drugs from medical to recreational. Comprehensive rules for salvaging and constructing, well, whatever you can dream up are provided.

Next, Chapter 4: Gangs looks at prison society, in particular gangs. Originally discouraged aboard the Gehenna, they have risen in prominence since the dimensional shift. There are quite a few, conferring various benefits on those who join as well as a ready-made group of allies and protectors. Naturally, they also make fearsome adversaries... which leads neatly on to Chapter 5: Combat in which the rules for resolving violent situations within the game are discussed. The intent of the game - role-playing in a very suspense-filled atmosphere - is stated, but sometimes things will get out-of-hand and a brawl will result. Using a turn-based system, characters can do pretty much anything they please, although moving and/or using one of their Traits (which include combat skills both armed and unarmed, of course) are the most common actions. The order in which combatants act is resolved by a d12 roll to which the Reflexes attribute is added, highest result going first. When you make an attack you roll 1d12 and add your Prowess, any apposite Traits may add to this, and for your attack to succeed the total must be more than the defending individual's roll of 1d12 + Reflexes (again some Traits may help). Damage done by successful attacks depends on whatever weapons were used. Despite the open nature of combat, with participants able to perform a wide range of actions in their turn, the actual mechanics are so simple that this is one of the shorter 'combat' chapters I've read in a while! More importantly, it makes combat flow fairly quickly so a game session does not get bogged down resolving brawls, and yet they are exciting and dramatic, with scope to become a real part of the ongoing plot.

Next is Chapter 6: Warden Only! This contains information intended for the Game Master alone. It starts off by explaining the GM's role with particular reference to the sort of game that this is: it is all about setting the correct mood of the alternate reality in which the characters find themselves. An atmosphere of tension, with moments of excitement and plenty of out-and-out terror... yet presented so that the players have fun, whatever their characters might be thinking about it all! Next comes a run-down of the physical setting: the Gehenna. There is plenty of detail about what the ship was intended to be like as well as its present state following the dimension shift - useful if you decide to begin play as a regular science-fiction prison drama and spring the strangenesses on your characters later. A key thing to remember is how automated the ship is - the only human beings aboard when it was launched were the prisoners. Following fine lists of random finds and individuals to help populate wherever the characters explore (marred only by a lack of proofreading, the only part of the book where mistakes have crept through) there are further details on injuries, diseases and healing. There is also detailed guidance on how the Ludvico Guages of Despair, Guilt and Insanity can be used to drive the game to new heights of horror.

Next comes psychic powers. Some people have found that the dimension shift has awakened them, and taking the Guages to extremes or nearly getting killed off can also cause them to manifest. Extreme physical or mental stress can cause anyone to display a psychic power while those who are aleady 'awakened' to their abilities can call them at will as well as being able to develop psychic Traits used in the same manner as any other.

Then comes Chapter 7: Demons. In this strange dimension, there are frequent manifestations of horrible beings, hideous to behold and terrifying to confront - these have come to be known as 'demons' and appear to be summoned into existence by the emotions of the trapped human beings aboard Gehenna. Whatever they really are nobody knows, but they appear to be alien intelligences that live in this wierd dimension and 'feed' on, or at least relish, strong negative emotions, creating horror, death and corruption themselves. Naturally, this brings on a degenerative spiral, demonic manifestations triggering the very feelings that bring about yet more manifestations. The mechanics for when they appear, details of how to create your own and a collection of vile examples are presented here. These examples are many and varied, all horrific beyond belief...

... and then follows Chapter 8: Other Threats! As if terrifying malign manifestations were not enough, this chapter details the automated 'custodians' designed to control the prison population - and which, being robots, carry on with their assigned duties however inappropriate in the current situation. So flee from a demon into a restricted area and be greeted for a demand for your work permit! Oh, and the other convicts are often likely to pose a threat to the characters as well, so quite a few examples are provided. Then there are 'natural' hazards such as fires, radiation, hard vacuum and all the other perils of life on a spaceship that is battered and not being properly maintained.

Finally comes Appendix: Inspiration. This contains lists of movies and other games (a curious unsorted mix of role-playing games and computer games) that were used to fire the authors' imaginations in the creation of this game and which may help you set the scene as you run your own adventures in this setting.

For claustrophobic horror gaming in a clearly-defined setting this game presents a wealth of potential. It's not going to be for everyone but if a science-fiction prison drama with episodes of terror and despair appeals, this is the ruleset for you. As presented, adventures will revolve about exploration and survival, open-ended but with no scope for final resolution (save the grim one of all the characters ending up dead), it will be interesting to see the extensions in scope provided by published adventures.