Pros

This sci-fi jam has bright colors everywhere, with many elements facilitating gameplay, with a 3D board, with slots for Bacteria, and dice. So, You’ve Been Eaten has a bit of an arcade look to it everywhere.

The asymmetry between the Miner and Beast is the delicious thing here, with the core game loop being the Miner using action dice to remove cards from the board, and then the Beast fills that tract up with cards from their hand. This gets fleshed out as you see the Miner having to manage their dice very specifically, bouncing between ideas of wanting to push back Bacteria from attacking them, or capturing Crystals for points.

The Miner can also acquire upgrades through floating Gear… in this Beast’s stomach. Then, he can use Magnets to swap positions of cards, or use Magnets to move things closer. What is very much appreciated, is that Miner is never completely restricted by dice rolls, as there’s ways to use different rolls for different abilities.

The Beast is playing a game about digestive management in managing their hand of 7 cards. So, this Beast player has to balance placing certain Bacteria in the track, that shifts down to eventually attack the Miner, with being careful to not place too many Crystals in the tract that is attached to Bacteria cards.

There’s even Immune Responses the Beast can get, which are like upgrades that can hurt the Miner, or make Bacteria win conditions easier. And when the beast buys 5 Immune Responses, they win the game!

Counterplay potential starts with the Beast able to ‘predict’ what Bacteria will hit the Miner with a ‘Mutation’ card. If that prediction is correct, the Beast gets a huge advantage of downgrading the Miner’s abilities. Just by the core gameplay loop of one player (Beast) is setting up the board for another (Miner), means that every action can really change the flow of things. Pair this with the Miner being able to delete the Beast's Immune Responses, or the Beast downgrading the Miner with Mutation guesses, and there's no shortage of thinking.

Solo modes work pretty well, and there’s even a cheeky ZERO player mode… which is just you setting up the game and it runs itself. Hilarious, but its never the case that it runs itself while you go do laundry or something, you still have to physically move the pieces around.

Cons

For all the game’s jokes in the rulebooks though, the jokes do NOT help it be learned. The constant little text bubbles for humor and information run long, and the rulebook needs more example visuals. A player board for each side would help a lot.

Our copy also had the striking issue of the game board constantly sticking up and coming apart in the middle, which was a huge drag on the experience, since every turn, in where cards are supposed to slide down, they would get caught on the connecting points.

With some replayability concerns and ‘predicting’ element not being too strong, So, You’ve Been Eaten still ends up being a good game. That is, if this game is ever going to be released to the public, not sure what is going on with the current Kickstarter campaign of this (4/20/22 as of writing).

Final Thoughts

So, You’ve Been Eaten boasts a tight duel where crunchy actions can make someone forget the innocence and appearance of theme. Snowballing is unlikely with each side frequently dampening the other, and as a result not every turn is flashy. But the multiple timers ticking means that there’s always tension, even on those slower turns.