Picked this one up on a whim, and glad I did. I have only tried the two player variant due to our group not being able to meet during covid. But we had a blast! The high point is the rush of building your ship, then going over your opponents ship and calling out inconsistencies! Bragging rights come up next when you tally the points at the end of your trip.
I can see this game getting a big repetitive once you have had a few playthroughs, but for right now its one of the few games that constantly makes it to the table for a play.
The one con I could make is that the game is priced higher here than local stores. So make sure you do your research before purchasing here like I did and save yourself 15 bucks.
Well, as one kind Amazon customer said to me after I posted a question "shut up and write a review" I feel that I should!
I first saw this game in the catalogue that accompanied Codenames and the small child in me liked the sound of building a space ship only to have it blown apart in space!
We have two small children (6&8) and one bigger child (me). We all love this game. The instructions although well written don't fully explain the game, I would recommend heading to YouTube where you will find some really helpful videos to help bring it to life. It is not difficult to understand but the videos explain it better.
The game is made up of two parts - build a space ship and then space exploration.
I first thought that building a ship would be the easy bit. For us this was the most challenging (in a good way) You have a spaceship template board and you need to lay your components on it. We had a practice run and Mr Smug here managed to build a ship which had no engines! This part really makes you think as you need to make sure you have enough guns, engines, batteries, cargo bays and crew quarters before you head into space.
The rest of the game sees you explore space to face pirates, meteors, abandoned ships and space stations and space battles.
This is where you can now start to laugh at your opponents as their carefully built spaceships start to fall apart and if, due to an unlucky dice roll, get blown to pieces completely.
It is at the higher end of pricing for a board game but when you see the content of the box and the detail put into the game you appreciate the cost.
This is a really fun game to play and is loved by all of us. The game says 10+ but as I have said, our 6 & 8 year olds grasped the rules and have enjoyed playing it - or is that just laughing as Mum's spaceship gets blown to pieces on the second mission!