Escape From Mars Designer Interview

About Escape From Mars, from BoardGameGeek:

You are not alone... Escape from Mars is a single player hidden traitor game. An alien virus has infected the crew of Mars Base Epsilon, the first off world colony, and strange insect like creatures swarm the outpost. Players must discover and quarantine the alien host, living among them, inside one of the crew, they must also gather alien gene samples, then via the communication room, request rescue. It's a race against time as crew become infected, drone aliens will be drawn to the colony until eventually an alpha alien will arrive and wreak havoc on the colony and its crew. Scour the colony for useful items and weapon, locate the clues to discover the alien host and send them to quarantine, keep crew infection down, research the alien gene sample codes, deal with crisis events and distrustful crew members, seal off parts of the base and set defenses, send the robot to rescue fallen crew, prepare medicines and vaccines, stock up on ammo, jump in a space suit and search the plant surface, destroy the alien drones then hold out until the rescue ship arrives, just make sure you get home...alone. The game is played over a set number of rounds (which also determined the difficulty), a crew marker counts down the rounds and at the other end of the round tracker an Alien marker moves in the opposite direction, if the markers ever meet, the Alpha Alien will arrive and the ‘Host' crew member will die.... or evolve? Players start off with a limited number of active crew, some must be rescued, other will be distrustful and need convincing to join. Player must scour the ship looking for clues as to the identity of the Alien Host, looking for blood samples and crew logs, players also need to gather alien samples for HQ. The colony is also full of weapons, tools, events, and more. Players risk crew when venturing out in colony as the longer they search, the more exposure to the alien virus they risk. The game is about managing and taking risks, use your crew wisely as they have different strengths and weaknesses. The game ends and the players win, when they have discovered and quarantined the Alien Host, found and reported the Alien samples to HQ, all get into the airlock and the rescue ship arrives. The player loose if no one makes it out alive, and this can happen in many ways...