Space Explorers

Fiddly rules confusing iconography and lazy art ( all the cards have the same art but at different zoom levels). This does not compete with the level quality games coming out nowadays.

Cool game. Fun. Iconography could be a bit larger and more clear and intuitive. Nonetheless, still fun.

As always from 25th Century, great production quality and nice mechanics.

Love the art style and how it got my kids asking question about space travel. Fun and quick to play when you get the hang of it. Game makers were responsive to my questions and the quality of all components was *ahem* out of this world.

Fun to play. Really gets going after a couple play throughs. A lot of tactical decisions to be made.

I love, love the art and aesthetic of this game! 1960s spacecraft and artwork, everything looks great. And it shares some engine-building mechanics with Splendor, which helped me pick it up quickly. Youve got to pay attention to your active bonuses, and remember to use them, but once you get going, its simple. I really like the limited-economy research tiles mechanic, where you pay tiles not to a bank, but to another player; makes for some interesting strategic options. We play with a couple of extra project tiles, just to keep the game going, because its fun. Plays well as a 2-player game.

This game appears simple enough, but there are several features that allow for complexity and strategy. Each game goes quickly, and you never know if youre winning or not until its over. If there is one downside, I would say its the lack of variety in the artwork, which speaks to the games low-budget development. Nevertheless, the artwork provided is beautiful 1950s style retro futurist that scratches a particular itch that other games dont. And that the rules are thematically linked to the space race concept (sharing research benefits everyone, research is conducted from the bottom up, etc.) is just a marvelous little attention to detail that shows the creators care deeply about what they were doing. This would make a lovely gift for the space lover in your circle!

I like Splendor but it got a little old over time. This game has the spirit of Splendor but with a much cooler theme and added mechanisms that make it more exciting. It adds actions that are more interactive with the other players so you don’t feel like you’re solely focused on your own cards.

This is one of those games I refer to as palate cleansers -- its a relatively short engine building game which can be completed in as little as 20-30m once you are familiar with it -- thus its a great game to play between longer games. It resembles Splendor, but, as with the game Gizmos (also an excellent short engine-builder), it adds a small mechanic which provides more depth than Splendor does. If you like Splendor (or Gizmos) youll probably like this game.

Fun game that plays quickly.