Tabletop
The Hail Mary Maneuver
A Project Hail Mary Game Night Guide for Lone Scientists and Accidental Heroes.
Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary was one of my favorite books read in 2023, together with our family book club, and the news of an official movie adaptation has been at the top of my mind recently. To be fair, I first encountered The Martian as a movie before I read the book, and that movie confirmed that Hollywood can translate heavier science fiction stories like this into compelling entertainment. But like any book reader, my initial response was cautiously optimistic, and I was going to hold judgment until more substantial trailers came out.
Fast-forward to 2026, and we’re in the middle of the peak promotion period before the movie’s release this March. The fact that Rocky the alien is featured heavily in the trailers (author Andy Weir stressed that Rocky being in the trailer is not a spoiler) was a bit surprising at first, but upon further reflection, I totally get why they went in this direction. The interactions and eventual relationship of Ryan Gosling’s Ryland Grace and Rocky are at the heart of this story.
And MAN, I really want that official Project Hail Mary LEGO set!
That said, I thought it might be fun to curate a Project Hail Mary-themed game night instead of waiting for more trailers from other markets or press that add-to-cart button at the Lego store. I went through our full collection of games and the games that friends have allowed us to play to come up with this roster of games for your consideration. Yes, game night themes are something I’m going to try to explore more with this new Geeky Guide.
About the first half of the book (and possibly the movie) involved slowly revealing the big problem Earth was facing and the whole reason behind the Hail Mary mission. SETI is a great game that echoes a lot of that early effort from scanning the stars for clues as to what was affecting the Sun to getting probes off of Earth and into the solar system to learn more. This game has enough science to keep the Rylands in your gaming groups happy, as long as they can wrap their heads around this heavy strategy game. This could be your opening game (get the heavy teaching out of the way up front) or maybe the main highlight of the night
Since the story isn’t set in something like Star Trek with full universal translators, one of the biggest hurdles Ryland faces is figuring out how to talk to the alien eventually named Rocky. AI Space Puzzle nicely approximates the challenge of figuring out a way to communicate with the malfunctioning AI (a player!), limited to using limited symbols, colors, and other bits. This thematic cooperative game may not be a one-and-done game during game nights, but it’s a nice mid-weight in-between game you can return to with the same set of players over and over again. Even just getting past the tutorial stages will already leave players feeling like they’ve become skilled abstract communicators ready to make first contact with alien life.
Similar to The Martian, Project Hail Mary is told from the perspective of its protagonist. With a significant part of the story involving Ryland working alone (but as alone as Mark!), I needed at least one dedicated solo game in this list. Enter Under Falling Skies, CGE’s answer to the question of how Space Invaders can be translated into a deeply fulfilling solo game. While the 2026 movie won’t be about fighting aliens falling from the sky, the game does capture a lot of the feeling of one man doing everything to save the world. Think of your dice placement decisions as Ryland’s experiments on the Hail Mary and all that fun science stuff.
I promise, this is the last CGE game in the list. Don’t blame me if they’ve made some of the best thematic strategy games across the years. Anyway, the book had some crazy action sequences that had our heroes trying to figure out solutions to life-or-death problems with very limited time to act, and no game captures that crazy energy better than Space Alert. This cooperative “10-minute game” is one of the most stressful games I’ve ever played, but that didn’t make it any less fun. And it’s a perfect fit for recreating those tense science action moments in the story in a way that only board games can.
These games aren’t a perfect thematic fit in terms of the Project Hail Mary story, but they’ll still feel right at home with the other games in the list:
This revitalized Vital Lacerda classic is set firmly on Earth (in a car factory, no less), but scratches an engineering-adjacent itch with its tighter worker placement action spaces. Get the parts you need, upgrade them in R&D, and test these designs in the right cars - this all makes for a compelling action loop that can make you feel like you saved the world, provided you survive Sandra. Thank the stars Ryland didn’t have a Sandra in his life.
I’ll be the first to admit that Inventions isn’t the easiest game to understand (even versus other Lacerda games), but it is all about how a big part of human history has been defined by ideas and the inventions borne of those ideas. The game even has a bit of a cooperative feel, given how players can work together to create inventions based on ideas. It could make for quite the highlight game for the night, provided SETI didn’t knock too many players out.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lie. But how can I mention Space Alert without bringing up Galaxy Trucker? Instead of saving the world in the best spaceship that humanity can dispatch from Earth, you and your fellow players are cobbling together half-way functional space trucks just to hope to survive your cargo run. It’s a different kind of crazy fun that also has a frenetic real-time phase, followed by a more measured “evaluation” phase of sorts. It’s like the beats of any movie! Give them action, and then let everyone breathe as someone explains what’s going to happen next.
So that’s the list! And wow, I didn't expect to craft such a heavy and intense game night, but that may be the only way to fully capture the feels of the movie. If you’re wondering where all the Mars games are, it’ll make more sense once I get my next thematic game night article about For All Mankind written and published. But if you have suggestions for games that we should include for the inevitable Project Hail Mary game night after the movie’s release, send me your suggestions via my socials below, and we’ll see if we can add them to the list.
