Enlarge / Behold the glory that is Mondo’s The Thing board game: Infection in Outpost 31. (credit: Nathan Mattise)

I wasn’t begging for early access to some figurine or poster sale from the impeccably designed film collectibles company. I wasn’t engaged in some intense round of promotional dodgeball. Instead, as I sat with seven other interested board gamers for a special preview of Mondo’s first boardgame release, The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31, I got swept up. I wanted only humans to make it onto the escape helicopter, dammit.

And judging by the 45-minutes-or-so I spent navigating possibly Thing-infested rooms and begging for Petri dishes, I’m pretty confident others will feel the same once they can play this game in late October.