As we prepare for this year's Spiel at Essen in Germany, this is a rather appropriate title for us to be featuring on Board's Eye View - Essen, after all, is the German word for 'eat'. In So, You've Been Eaten, the premise is that a space miner is trying to collect valuable crystals from inside the belly of a space beast. Meanwhile, the beast is trying to digest the miner that's in its stomach by unleashing the various bacteria from its stomach fauna.
It's an asymmetric game played by up to two players (miner vs beast) where each player is primarily focused on their own objectives and distinct gameplay but where each has to have an eye on the activities and progress of their opponent lest their opponent manages to achieve one of their win conditions. In the case of the miner, that'll be to retrieve all eight crystals and in the case of the beast, it'll be to collect five Immune Response cards.
Each turn, the miner rolls three six-sided dice to determine the actions they'll take. Spend a die to upgrade an action and you'll make it more powerful. That'll also be worth doing as a defensive measure otherwise a correct guess or deduction by the beast of what bacteria you fend off might force you to discard one of the crystals you've previously collected. The deduction element incorporates a bluff and counter-bluff dynamic into the game that's reminiscent of the core mechanic in Not Alone (Corax / Stronghold).
Scott Almes has designed So, You've Been Eaten so that it can be played as a two-player game (miner vs beast) but you can also play it solo either as the miner against a 'hibernating beast' or as the beast against a robot miner. And you'll be amused to see that the box describes this game as catering for 0-2 players. And yes that means it can be played with no players at all: just pit the robot miner against the hibernating beast :-)
LudiCreations have done an excellent job with the production of So, You've Been Eaten, with some great art by Kwanchai Moriya. And with a playing time of just 30 minutes, this easily digested game is never going to leave you feeling bloated.