Welcome to the galaxy! Your tiny civilization is ready to grow, flourish, and thrive as you colonize worlds, develop technology, expand your fleet, and study science. As their leader, it is up to you to lead your people to prosperity. An adversary looms among the stars to make your efforts more difficult, but if you work hard, your can overcome any obstacles they throw at you. Your people are counting on you!

What Is It?

Cooperative – You can play solo, or as a team of 2.

Melding & Splaying – Cards are multi-use, and you will splay them to track your team’s fleet/science numbers, track your character’s colonies/techs, and track influence on locations/adversaries.

Pool Building / Dice Rolling – Each player starts with a certain set of dice they can gather and roll each round. As they collect locations, they can choose to add them to their play area as colonies, which may expand their potential pool moving forward. Players will roll those dice to fill locations and encounters, and earn bonuses from their Starbase.

Variable Player Powers / Variable Set-Up – There are different characters to choose from with different dice pools, abilities, and milestones (which unlock more abilities/levels). There are also a number of adversaries to choose from which will change up the game and how players approach strategy.

Who Is It For?

  • 1 to 2 Players – Works well either way; the characters have different sides depending on player count, so it scales for that.
  • Ages 14 & Up / Mid-Weight Gamers – There’s a lot of upkeep round to round, and a lot of small things to remember, so it may not be great for younger players, or less experienced gamers
  • Fans of cooperative games, dice rolling, and melding/splaying
  • Players who don’t mind a fair amount of luck/randomness

Variants

Campaign Mode – Choose a campaign sheet, which has a unique set up, and new actions + ability nodes to earn bonuses. There is a special scoring system at the end depending on winning or losing. After 6 games, compare the total score to the list of ranks in the rules.

It’s an okay variant if you’re already big on the game and want a set-up chosen for you, and to play a bunch of games in a row. Although, it’s also easy enough to stop after a game and come back to the next one later, so you don’t have to play all 6 at once.

PROS

  • Aesthetics – Nice art, clear graphic design
  • Components – Nice dice, tokens, and cards
  • Cool to upgrade yourself; as you level up you can access more of your abilities and you can add more techs and colonies to improve yourself
  • Multi-use cards are cool and builds a lot of variety to the game
  • “Big” game in a small box – there’s a lot of things to balance (fleet, science, dice pools, etc) and different ways to strategize
  • Even if a roll isn’t exactly what you want, there’s always options for what you can use dice on, so you never feel like a round was completely wasted
  • Good variety of player characters and adversaries

CONS

  • Rules – I didn’t love the layout of the rulebook (concepts, then phases) and I thought it was a little tough/clunky to get through
  • Length – It was pretty long for what it was, and rounds can get repetitive
  • At 2 players, it can be frustrating to decide who gets the techs/colonies as you earn them; it can feel like a slower grind to build yourself up
  • Splaying cards (particularly those on the Starbase) gets annoying because you’re fiddling with them so often

Final Thoughts

Getting into the game for the first time was a little rough because I struggled with the rules. Once you actually get into playing, it isn’t too bad, but if you tend to forget rules between plays, it might be a hard one to get back into because revisiting the rules isn’t fun.

I like games where I’m just rolling dice and choosing how to most optimally use them, so this was cool at first, plus I like the theme and the different characters. I just thought the game lasted too long for what you were doing, since it didn’t change much round after round.

Overall, it’s okay if you want to chuck some dice, but if you’re not into a lengthier game of that nature, then you might want to pass.

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 5/10

Designer – Chris Cieslik
Artists – Alanna Cervenak, Sam “Crowbar” Henry
Publisher – Asmadi Games
MSRP – $30.00
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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