The Aurora has left the northern land and unfortunately you were unable to reach it in time. Therefore, you've got no other solution than trying to chase it, going south in your truck. On the horizon, you see a big military base. There you will face the real culprit behind the death of the planet. You know that this might be a suicide run, but your survival spirit inspires you to start this new journey...

Project Athena, the first gameplay expansion for Last Aurora, is a new adventure set in a southern land: players have lost the Aurora and are now forced to reach it at another southern port. However, they must cross a big Military Base that hosts an extremely dangerous enemy within... an evil form of artificial intelligence called Athena. It will try to stop you at any cost, using a powerful artificial army and a wide array of automated devices.

Project Athena: after loosing the Aurora, players may reach it at a southern port, in a new journey.

The expansion introduces many new mechanics and possibilities to the base game, including a new resource, a new type of enemy, new bonus actions, and a new alert mechanic which increases the tension during the game.

Project Athena allows players to manage a new type of Resource: Nuclear Batteries. They will find fully charged batteries and half-charged batteries, which can be used in several ways, spending a charge to activate powerful special cargo boxes to perform many actions, or to feed an Android – a new type of artificial Survivor who doesn’t need organic food, but nuclear batteries. Anyway, even if nobody knows why, many have been killed for their batteries. The Survivors report that they saw artificial organisms devastate villages to collect them. They said that there are active scanner drones patrolling the base in search for batteries. Consequently, during the game players will have to carefully manage their batteries as carrying too many will attract enemies.

Nuclear batteries can also be used to power up many useful devices, including Energy Weapons, during the game. These new weapons are more powerful than the standard ones, but they need a fully charged battery to used!

The expansion also includes the Gamma Map, which displays the road board of the game. It introduces 12 action bonuses to give players more choices and freedom during the Exploration Phase.

The right-hand section of the map shows the new Alerts mechanic. During the game, players can gain or lose Alerts from Athena. One way to gain such Alerts is based on the number of Nuclear Batteries they have in their possession when the A.I. sends drones to monitor their activities. The more Alert points, the more damage the players receive during the game.

An example of Alerts, a new mechanic introduced in Project Athena expansion.

Alerts also influence the speed of the Aurora: when the third Alert Scan appears, the ship can decide to move faster based on the highest Alert value reached by the players.

Automatic Turrets represent a new type of enemy. Each one patrols a portion of the map represented by the five red areas shown on the road board. Destroying an automatic turret awards you with Fame Points at the end of the game. Their behavior is very different from standard enemies' in the following ways:

  • They cannot be damaged: only destroyed. Therefore, players must prepare their most powerful weapon to try to perforate their armor in a single attack.
  • They inflict an amount of damage to each Convoy in the area based on the players' Alert level. As a result, if players don't have any Alert points, they completely dodge the Turrets' attacks (but that is easier said than done)!

Finally, the expansion presents a new type of Location: the Armed Location. When a player chooses to explore this new type of card, he can immediately use the fixed weapons shown of the card to fight turrets and enemies during his Exploration.

This was a brief overview of the extra mechanics and possibilities introduced by the Project Athena expansion, the hardest challenge to reach salvation from the frozen wasteland.

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