Do you think the games presented are too simple? So today we have for you a preview of the massive board game Interstellar Spaceship, where you’ll join others in a race against time that will really get you fired up. The following paragraphs will tell you what this part has to offer and how its extensions work.
- Number of players: 14
- Game time: 120 minutes
- Price: 2316 CZK (Tlama Games)
- Age: 13+
The life cycle of the Sun in Interstellar is coming to an end
Every star one day turns into a red giant, which is really not pleasant to exist next to. In 2357, in the game Spaceship Interstellar, even the Sun is slowly approaching a similar state, which is the merit of humanity itself. Therefore, it is necessary to get out from under its reach before the Earth is engulfed in flames, and find a new home in which you will actively participate along with the multinational company of your choice.
As is typical in board games, Interstellar plays out in rounds that alternate between three phases that follow each other neatly, so you definitely won’t be able to play one at the same time and the other at different times. First comes the Action phase. During it, you are allowed to perform one of five game actions. More precisely, you can take any of five tokens, with the last one offered being a token that will give you the opportunity to skip your turn, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, because the sooner you complete the Action, the sooner you will move to the rescue stage and, even worse, sometimes you will receive an interesting reward.
During the action phase, you can choose to mine solar energy, which is a one-time step to obtain resources, but speeds up the end somewhat, and also creates a negative image of your corporation, which is possibly even worse than causing the apocalypse. While the previous option is a one-time thing, technology research is a step that can be repeated until you just feel the need to. Once you have spent the required amount and engaged scientists, there is nothing stopping you from researching one of the technologies. You have to invent them fairly gradually, with one exception – life-saving technologies, which are limited by the fact that they can only be invented in limited quantities.
Just as unlimited as the basic idea of exploration, working in the market as well as traveling between planets, the ships you control always cost a certain amount of fuel. You can play tokens built on repeat until you cover them with another token, which again can be unlimited or disposable, as is the case with Planetary Production. This action works as follows: You can activate a planetary production token on Earth or on other worlds where your bases are located. Whether you activate all the buildings in a given world is entirely up to you, which I personally really like because activation requires a lot of thought. 
However, you must also consider their consequences. Elemental mining can then be supported by a research ship, giving you one more cube of materials than without it. There are also special tokens that you get by completing various goals, for which you can unlock parts with special actions. As mentioned above, once you complete this stage, the salvation stage will begin, which is the basis of this work. During the rescue phase, you don’t actually use the planetary production token, but rather process the remaining action tokens upside down. Regardless of whether it is basic or special.
Again, there is nothing stopping you from skipping ahead and getting your chosen resources. But until you do that, you are working with resources and then doing one action after another. The first option is to make a mechanism for Interstellar that you expand with certain raw material cubes. You add ready-made mechanisms to a spaceship module in an attempt to complete it. The second option is nothing more than sending your representative to the space of the world government, where the scientist you choose will nest and bring you benefits associated with this space. If you’re not applying for a government position, there’s also Population Rescue, where you pay for a certain color of raw material from the market and put population numbers into cryopods, which also allows you to gain prestige.
The final option is to move the probe using fuel placed in a specific space, at the end of which is the Trappist system. Once you have completed this stage as well, the government stage will come, which in no small part serves as a moment during which you will evaluate some decisive factors and, as a result, you will also know whether the end has already arrived. will come or not, because in this phase the Sun automatically moves along the solar spiral, which can lead to absorption of the Earth. This can be one of the negative conclusions if you fail to complete at least two of the three goals, after which you will face the final round and subsequent scoring. If nothing like that happens, you prepare another bike and move on.
If you like additional modules, there are quite a lot of them in the database. In the menu you can find seven specific options that can shape the gameplay in certain ways. If you think that the studio behind this work has forgotten about loners, then I will make you happy, because this is definitely not the case. You can also find a single player mode, the appearance of which beckons you to try it out, and that’s not all, because here you can find three more expansions.
Kuiper Hazard, Antimatter, and Halley’s Comet add-ons take Interstellar to the next level
From the previous paragraphs you understand that this thing is definitely not a miss. However, it can still be significantly enriched. The very first expansion, Danger from Kuiper, works with the idea of asteroids that you can capture with your mobile firing platforms. You read that right, this expansion allows you to burn asteroids whose tokens play a vital role, especially during the solar phase and at the end of the government phase, during which you always “move” them. The firing platforms themselves then produce action tokens associated with their activation. Overall, this expansion adds an interesting aspect that I was quite pleased with.
The second expansion that can be obtained is Anti Matter, which adds the element Muscovy to the game, which can be obtained by mining and synthesizing solar energy. In addition to him, there are also specialists working in the laboratory, where they are working with the newly discovered novelty. What’s interesting is that while regular solar mining is problematic, when it comes to getting Muscovy you don’t lose reputation or move the solar mining bar. Even more interesting is the fact that by actively turning this component on, you change the orbits of the planets, which is a decent amount of wilderness that also acts as a cube. Repeatedly moving the planet to a given point can easily lead to its subsequent destruction.
The latest expansion is Halley’s Comet. As the title suggests, Interstellar doesn’t add anything other than Halley’s Comet, which causes quite a stir along its path. The comet can be mined, raw materials can be extracted from it, and, most importantly, it can be moved, because this beauty will definitely not sit in the corner of the map. During its passage, you deal with the gravitational influence of the planets and, above all, with the development of the comet itself, which “rolls out” more and more raw materials. There’s a lot I like about it, the way it moves during planetary movements.
The additions for the Interstellar board game are very dense and add very nicely to the overall replay value. My personal favorite was Antimatter, along with Halley’s Comet. A little Danger from Kuiper isn’t bad either. Once a player has the base game, it makes sense to explore these parts as well, as each of them deserves real attention.
Spaceship Interstellar is an outstanding strategy game.
There are a lot of board games, but let’s talk, only a few of them are in the category of projects that you really want to have in your home because they are something special. And it is to this narrow group that the board game “Spaceship Interstellar” belongs. In it, a person has the opportunity, like Ikaros, to experience the struggle with the golden disk, but he does not have to lose it, which is exciting. Of course, in many cases this will end in disaster, but in the end you will find that with the right distribution of your powers, you can save humanity.
The Spaceship Interstellar set is one of the carefully crafted strategies designed to captivate fans of the genre and hold their attention for hours. Also, when you add variations and extensions to your piece, there is a good chance that the piece will last you until the fall and you won’t play it. If you like this format, I probably won’t be afraid to embark on this epic rescue of humanity. If you launch the game, expect to find in the box, next to the box you will also find a patched token correcting the creators’ misstep.
Source :Indian TV
