Black Hole (board game)

Black Hole is a 1978 board wargame published by Metagaming Concepts.

Gameplay

Black Hole is a two-player science fiction combat game. The setting is an doughnut-shaped asteroid created by aliens that has a black hole in the middle. Each player represents a major corporate power trying to take possession of the asteroid, its alien artifacts and the black hole.[1]

Each side has counters representing heavy armor units armed with either rockets or lasers. The map shows both the inside and the outside of the asteroid, and has varying rates of movement from sector to sector as units to move to inner or outer edges to account for the lack of a three-dimensional model. Rockets that are launched immediately achieve orbit, and spiral around the torus until encountering another unit.[2] Units that come too close to the black hole are randomly transferred to another location.[1]

Reception

In the October 1979 edition of Dragon (Issue 30), David Cook was impressed by the two-dimensional map of the asteroid that managed to approximate three-dimensional space. He was also impressed by the movement rules that tried to account for gravity around the asteroid. However, he was puzzled as to why only heavy armor units were included in the game, and was disappointed that the black hole has only one minor effect on the game. He concluded, "Black Hole is a fun game. It plays very fast and forces players to plan at least one move ahead. Movement of units becomes an important consideration. Objectives are simple."[2]

Don Turnbull reviewed Black Hole for White Dwarf #15, giving it an overall rating of 9 out of 10, and stated that "Black Hole is a unique little game - fascinating and appealing, which lives up to all the characteristics of the micro-game. It deserves to be very popular indeed."[3]

In the inaugural issue of Ares Magazine, David Ritchie was also disappointed that "the black hole doesn't have much effect on play, except to randomly radiate units trying to jump across the hole from one side of the doughnut to the other. However, it does make a hell of a good title." Ritchie rated the game an average of 6 out of 9, saying, "Playable in an hour or so. Moderately simple."[1]

References
  1. Ritchie, David (March 1980). "A Galaxy of Games". Ares Magazine. Simulations Publications, Inc. (1): 30.
  2. Cook, David (October 1979). "The Dragon's Augury". Dragon. TSR, Inc. (30): 34.
  3. Turnbull, Don (October–November 1979). "Open Box". White Dwarf. Games Workshop (Issue 15): 20.
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