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In 1982, the same year Harrison Ford made his first appearance as Rick Deckard, his image featured in lo-fi greyscale on a manual for a board game adaptation you’ve likely never played: Blade Runner.
There’s a very real reason why you won’t have seen this game anywhere near any best board games list. According to legend, only 100 prototype copies were made before the plug was pulled on the project due to licensing issues. As a result of this rarity and the film’s legacy, eBay listings for the Blade Runner board game consistently fetch hundreds of dollars. For example, an auction lot containing one of these unreleased copies and a poster for the film is currently sitting at a bid of $500.
This is a truly wild price tag for a board game and so very few people have actually had the opportunity to sit down and experience it. However, the game documentation indicates that it has social deduction elements and sees players use VK monitor readings to suss out which of their party is secretly a replicant.
If your current budget doesn’t quite stretch to you forking out half a grand for a chunk of cinema history but you’d still like a healthy heaping of sci-fi detective vibes at your next game night, there are a couple of worthwhile options to pursue.
If your idea of fun is diving deep into the best tabletop RPGs, the folks at Free League have you covered. As we laid out in our review of the Blade Runner RPG Starter Set, this is one of the most exciting and faithful homages to the Blade Runner series. Set between Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049, this is the best way to live out your neo-noir fantasy. Using the accessible but rewarding Year Zero system, the Blade Runner RPG is suited to everyone from tabletop newbies to die-hard hobbyists. How beautifully serendipitous is it that it’s currently $10 off? If this sounds like your jam, you can get the Blade Runner RPG Starter Set for $39.99 on Amazon.
If you’re just looking for a quick board game that recreates the tense interrogation of Blade Runner’s Voight-Kampff test, Inhuman Conditions should totally be your speed. It’s a free two-player social deduction game from the creators of Secret Hitler, where you take up the role of an Investigator and attempt to discern if your suspect is a human or a robot through strange and subjective roleplay questions. Simply print and play the rules from the designers’ site (or pick up a physical copy on eBay if you really fall in love with it) and begin the careful work of grilling your friends – or are they merely replicants who look like your friends?
For more suggestions on what to add to your shelves, why not check out the best card games or best two player board games?
