PLAGIARISM OR NOT PLAGIARISM ?

History and birth of the game Nostromo (Fbgames) :

4 years ago, I was presenting the prototype of my game "Nostromo" in a gathering organised by Edge Entertainment in Toulouse. Several groups of players played it and my prototype was rather well appreciated. I presented the game again at the TGS (in Toulouse again) several times each one being invited by Edge Entertainment.
End of 2014, a guy named Aldebaran Genest contacted me by email (I still have our messages in my inbox) to tell me he was interested by my game, that he played it during one of the presentations and fell in love with it... So good
We exchange several mails and I send him the game components and the rules PDF when he asked for them at the beginning of 2016... Edge was also interested by my game at that time, I thought it was normal to give them priority since they've been so kind as to let me show my prototype in their booth during TGS...
Sadly it didn't go any further with Edge for several reasons, such as the fact that they have a publishing agenda completely full and very little time to give to the study and developing of new games... (I have another game that is to be published by them very soon anyway).

Aldebaran finally sent me a contract for Nostromo (in june 2016)... I read it, he offers me 3% of the dealer's price up until 20.000 copies sold, then 6% from 20 to 40.000 copies, etc. His mail asks me to contact him for any questions... So yes, I'm contacting him and ask for precisions because his offer lacks a few things : no remuneration between 40 and 60.000 copies and I wished to talk about the rate that, friends designers you may confirm, wasn't very high.
No reply to my mail. I ask again in september 2016... Still no reply
Since then, nothing... and one day (a few weeks ago), the prototype of "Nostromo" lands on the desk of the team at EDGE... Made in Wonderdice, and the designer name on the box... well it's not me !!! (By the way and unless I am mistaken, I believe nobody's name appears)
The project has been rejected by Edge's team who immediately recognized my prototype disguised like a stolen car... and it would have been difficult for them to work with a publisher "borrower" of someone else's ideas, and for this specific case, one of their own.

I've always read on the forums that there was on this market some good morality and a great respect between designers and publishers, that nobody stole the ideas of others and that you shouldn't be afraid of showing your projects... I know we don't live in a gummy bear world and in the end, you have to be very careful who you're dealing with.

So PLAGIARISM or not PLAGIARISM ?

Here are the similarities between my prototype and the game presented today by Wonderdice :
I won't go into the similarities about the name and the theme of the game, to consider mechanics and components. In both games, the action takes place in the universe set by the Alien first movie, and in both cases one player is the Alien and the others play together as a team :

1 - In my game, to win as the crew, you have to gather 5 items and leave the Nostromo. WD's version : activate 5 urgency procedures. All labels are different, but in the end, it's the same thing.

2 - In my game, the Alien wins if he captures 6 crew members or if the deck of cards is exhausted. In WD's : the Alien has to capture 6 crew members or the mission deck must be exhausted.

3 - The cards of my game have two usages : They represent one of the 5 objectives to gather but may also be used as special actions... In WD's... the same !!!

4 - The games components : identical but for a few details : a board, 2 tokens for each crew member including a decoy, 2 item tokens (flamethrower and motion tracker), tokens (eggs in my game, coccoon for WD's)

5 - I hate games with player elimination... In my game, no player gets eliminated even if they get to be eaten by the Alien... In WD's neither !

6 - The movie's cat : it's there with a token randomly placed on the board, and allows for protecting a room from the Alien... WD's version : THE SAME !

7 - The board : In my game, it's built with neutral rooms and other rooms with advantages... It's safer to hide in a room which doesn't offer any bonus, and of course some other rooms are more dangerous... In WD's too

8 - Setup and placement of crew tokens and decoys are absolutely identical in both games.

9 - Game phases identical : 1 - Placing crew tokens and decoys hidden / 2 - Alien's hunt... and oh ! In WD's the Alien can visit two rooms per turn... in my game too !

10 - One of the rooms allows to store the eggs/coccoons gathered by the Alien. In my game this room quickly becomes a place to protect for the Alien player because the crew members may come there and destroy the eggs... well... in WD's also. (sorry, I didn' translate the pun about a french song : "Félicie aussi")

For the rest, there are obviously some added material, and I could make a list...
Actually, and I'm always saying this, this game seems to be exactly what my game could have been after being developed along with a publisher except... that I have never been consulted to do so. So when they tell me that two games about the same theme are bound to have similarities, I agree. There's an Alien, a spaceship, some crew members, a cat, a flamethrower and a box that goes bip... But there's also the guy who thought about creating this game a few years ago, who showed his prototype and find it a few months later barely revised, ready to be commercialized, and feels like being taken as a poor schmuck.

So : plagiarism or not plagiarism ?