The Only Way to be Sure is a DDAL-legal adventure for level 5-10 characters written by Jason Panella and Jim Parkin that draws a lot of inspiration from the Alien franchise.

The plot revolves around a crashed mind flayer spelljammer; the surviving pilot has enslaved a local village and is using them in various experiments. The adventurers need to discover this and free the surviving villagers after they’re contracted by a local merchant who found the town empty the last time he visited.

You can expect a fair bit of creepy exploration and some challenging combats in this one. The adventure uses the 2+2 style, so it consists of a two-hour main body, with two one-hour bonus objectives. The plot works without including the objectives, but you get more closure with the inclusion of the final objective (entitled, amusingly if not quite accurately, “Nuke the Site from Orbit”).

The Season 8 style of the adventure means there’s a lack of boxed text, you have to go to the appendix to discover descriptions of many of the NPCs, and it’s occasionally difficult to tell what’s going on in a scene. The lack of boxed text is noticeable. I find boxed text is very good for setting the mood of a scene, but without it the DM may struggle with framing the descriptions themselves. The quality of the material means that the adventure is still enjoyable without this aid, but it’s something I would have preferred to have as a tool.

The adventure seems a little vague as to its intentions in some sections and very reliant on the DM pulling things together. As the underlying plot is obvious, this didn’t prove a problem for me, but there are pieces of important information that seem to be missing. The adventure notes that “The party should find enough clues to point them to the next episode in the mine”, but I was left wondering what those clues were and how they fit together. Also, how far is the mine away from the village?

The bonus objective with a group of orcs relies on the DM heavily as to how it’s introduced; it’s very easy for the adventurers to avoid if they want. You can play this encounter as role-playing or combat. The framing of the encounter is left up to the DM; some DMs will love that, but others may feel lost as to how to integrate it into the adventure. If combat doesn’t eventuate, I don’t think it adds enough material; the orcs don’t know enough relevant information to drive the adventure forward.

The scenes inside the mine work very well, with very unsettling material. The combat that ensues once the adventurers find the villagers is very challenging and may prove disturbing to some players and DMs; you may find it inappropriate for some groups, although I thought it was suitably horrific. The final bonus objective works very well, although you don’t need to include it.

The references to the Alien movies become most noticeable when the adventurers rescue the prisoners from the ship. The adventure doesn’t copy the plot of the movies, but you’ll find several references, including strange, fleshy eggs and a young girl whose nickname is Newt. Some groups may find this distracting.

Overall, I liked this adventure, although it requires some work from the DM to pull it together. Recommended.