Galaxy Trucker

[Zarniwoop]

This is a beautiful game with a large amount of components all of very good quality with excellent artwork throughout. The rulebook is well written and takes you through the first round in easy stages so you get used to how to play the game. The manual is also full of in theme humour making it a joy to read and follow.

Your aim is to build a ship from scrap parts found in the company warehouse, all players doing this simultaneously. You take your "ship" through a flight following a deck of adventure cards which detail the hazards and encounters you have on the way. These all test the quality of your ship, should it survive the journey there are rewards at the end. You can pick up trade goods on the way, the end of the journey rewards you with credits for the best looking ship (least exposed connectors) and the order in which you land. You then have to pay a penalty for any pieces you lost from your ship along the way.

The components you find to build your ship consists of lasers, engines (both single and double), battery compartments, cabins, Storage compartments, life support and structural units. Each of which have a number of connectors single, double, universal or smooth. When building your ship you have to place components in the designated spaces but you always have to connect them to an existing piece matching the connectors on all sides.

In later rounds you have more advanced rules which allows the use of life support meaning you can now add aliens to you crew who can enhance your engine or laser strength. The game is played over three rounds where each round sees the players building bigger and bigger ships.

This game does not take itself seriously and as long as you do the same it is really fun to play and every game is different. There are variants in the back of the rulebook for experienced players to make the game harder.

I would recommend this game to anyone, it's just a shame they hiked the price so much from the original release as this may put some people off.

[Spirit Games]

This is currently my favourite game, but as Zarni has pointed out, price is an issue, and being constantly surrounded by temptation I have to be strict with myself - though if there are any still in stock come Christmas Eve my resolve will certainly crack. The worrying thought is that the next batch may go up again. Some Rio Grande restocks have come in at considerably higher prices than the exchange rate crash explains.

[CardcoreGamer]

One word of caution about this one is a criticism my wife has and one I've heard from a couple of people which is that some players find the 'building a ship' bit to be a lot of fun (which it is ) and the 'your ship goes to Swiss cheese' bit to be no fun at all.

It's not a design flaw, it's a personality thing; some people see it as their hard work being destroyed without them having a say in the matter, or as a lack of meaningful decisions once the ship is 'launched', whereas other people enjoy the mayhem as their ship breaks up and a tiny, scorched lump makes it to the end of the round - you can imagine a very bedraggled captain with burnt hair staggering to the delivery terminal with a smouldering crate: "sign here please!"

All in all it is a fun game if people are OK with the second part, but it does seem a bit of a sharp split - you either 'get it' or you don't. Personally I feel all the fun is in the construction and the 'flight' isn't enough of a pay-off, but the first expansion adds some more genuine choices into the card draw.

[EvilGinger]

I am not sure what the problem is as the whole point of phase one is to build a ship which will cope with phase two & part of the fun for me is that it wont always happen. Granted you could have a game about building space ships from scrap & junk & competing for a limited supply of the same & a separate game about intergalactic trading its just I find they work well together & provide to ma a fun an diverting game with a nice dash of silliness.

Ginger

[CardcoreGamer]

I am not sure what the problem is as the whole point of phase one is to build a ship which will cope with phase two...

For me it was that no matter how you built your ship, it felt like once you'd launched it there were few decisions to be made 'en route' and some cards came up that could not be designed for; the unstoppable, large asteroids were a particular point of annoyance. The expansion has things such as sacrificing an engine to enter 'hyperdrive' and skip a card which then means you've a risk/reward decision to make and this is something that would help the game a lot for me, but due to the price of the expansion I never got to play it.

It was, for me, a game which I really, really wanted to like, but I only enjoyed the first half.