You are imprisoned on a doomed ship. Helpless in a cell, you hear the ship’s security forces being overwhelmed around you. As a last ditch effort, the ship’s captain has released you. Despite knowing how dangerous you are, he also knows your full capabilities. Fight the invading force and rescue as many innocent souls on the ship before time runs out. Perhaps, what you do here can atone for your past. Or maybe this is just a good chance for you to disappear into the galaxy… and keep running.

Extraction is a one to four player cooperative game that includes an intense core game, scenario-based challenges, and multiple single player campaigns with unique “level up” systems. Extraction has fluid and easy-to-understand game mechanics, but is not for the causal game group. The base game is high difficulty and extremely challenging. There is no scenario in which the ship you are on can survive. The only question is… how many can you rescue before it is too late?

At the game’s start, players will roll three dice that will determine what actions they can take. They will, additionally, have one character card to expand their action selection into more powerful and/or more efficient abilities. Players will gain Adrenaline as they run through the ship’s hallways, running and gunning, and evacuating as many innocents as they can. The Adrenaline they gain rotates through a track that may be used for two purposes: gaining spare actions and leveling up. Each time a player levels up, they must choose an additional action die or character action card that make those action die more valuable. When do you take that extra action die versus when do you expand your tableau of possible actions? Should you use the Adrenaline to have a powerful turn now? Or save it to level up next turn? You couldn’t possibly let that innocent person two rooms over perish… could you?

As players rescue innocents on the ship, they draw a Survivor Card depicting that person. All Survivor Cards in the game have unique art work. Each card tells a story of an innocent person on the doomed ship, and has temporary advantages and disadvantages that are granted to the player as long as they are escorting that person. Victory is obtained by rescuing a set amount of survivors. There is never a game of Extraction in which saving the ship is even an option. The only question in Extraction is… can you rescue enough people and get off the ship in time…

—description from the designer