Tesseract Review| Board Game Brief | Room 51

About Tesseract, from BoardGameGeek:

The Tesseract appeared in our skies six days ago, over the exact magnetic north of the planet. It was the size of a city block. Since that time it has been condensing, collapsing upon itself. It can now fit into the palm of your hand. Our world's best minds must now find a way to contain and control the reactions of this alien artifact, or its exponentially increasing destructive power will remove our planet from existence, reconfiguring our space and time to the extra-dimensional needs of its creators. Can you and your team work together to shut down the Tesseract, or will humankind simply be a blip in the grand scheme of the universe? Time will tell. Tesseract is a compelling, cooperative dice-manipulation game for 1 to 4 players. The focal point of the game is a block of 64 dice, the Tesseract, which sits at the center of the board on a raised platform. Players will remove cubes to place in their individual labs, transfer them as needed to others, adjust the cube's values and, importantly, isolate the cubes into the containment matrix, neutralizing them. To Contain a cube a player must have in their lab 3 or more cubes all of one value (a Set) or in sequence (a Run), either all of one color or having none of the same colors. By filling the containment matrix completely (24 total unique dice) they will stop the reaction and win the game. But if the Tesseract has its last cube removed beforehand - or if 7 breaches occur, the game is lost and our world ceases to exist. Asymetric character abilities include a passive, 'always on' ability and a unique action that is only available to that player. Research cards earned during play help give players an edge, as do the even more powerful Containment cards, unlocked from the matrix. Tesseract is a very challenging co-op game, with lots of replay value built into the number of characters and various threat platforms which govern the difficulty. The game scales remarkably well and has a solo mode that is every bit as engaging. The tension mounts quickly as the Tesseract sheds cubes at the end of every player's turn, primes them and potentially causes Breaches to occur, bringing us closer to disaster. -description from publisher