I’ve played both recently, and the overarching similarities are strong: doomed spacecraft, secret objectives, likely betrayals, everyone is screwed.
I’d say that Stationfall is harder to learn up front, because there is so much (SO MUCH) variability in the different character’s abilities and goals. But despite all that complexity, it’s remarkably intuitive once you get going. There are many rules, but they all bear some relationship to reality (e.g., the telepathic rat can’t mind control you if you’re wearing a helmet – that’s just common sense). And they provide a wonderful sense of flexibility on your turn.
Nemesis is easier to pick up (not physically; the box is enormous) and less prone to giving players analysis paralysis. On the flip side, it provides fewer opportunities for clever, unexpected turns.
Both are tense and a lot of fun with the right group. Of the two, I prefer Stationfall because it’s so darn weird, but I’d still happily play Nemesis.
Yeah, that describes my taste in games (and in general) pretty well.
I’ve enjoyed my games of Nemesis and really like what it tries to do and it succedes at it. Stationfall seems like it respects player time a little better. I also like the lack of player elimination. You can die in the first chunk of a long Nemesis game and be sitting by your lonesome for a long time if everyone else is still in it.
Like Tom said, pretty much the same ruleset (which I would call perfectly solo-friendly) although I find Lockdown has a few more interesting wrinkles personally.
Oh, if @tomchick is looking for a solitaire game Stationfall definitely isn’t it. I compare it to Nemesis but in my mind those are both solid group experiences.
They aren’t just different bag building rules, they have different event decks, attack decks, weaknesses (or equivalent mechanic) and in one case introduce an insanity mechanic for players. Another causes mutations.
I played Nemesis once, back in January and had a blast.
My character had to escape the ship with the corpse. The first thing I did was grab the corpse and lug it around while repairing things. Once stuff was repaired and we were headed to the right coordinates, me and my corpse friend bolted off the ship, leaving everyone else behind.
The last time I played Nemesis, my objective was to make sure we researched an alien egg. I was so happy in the early game when one of my colleagues snuck into the nest and grabbed an egg for us to study. He then spent the rest of the game gallivanting around with his pet egg, never using it for research, and eventually smuggling it into an escape pod so that he could cuddle with it all the way back to Earth.
