Science Fiction

You and your companions are cosmic spirits in an alien, infant universe. Seeking more, you opened breaches to other realms, setting lose a pandora's box of chaos, knowledge and wonder across your reality. These new experiences confer upon each of you new emotions and varying abilities, blessing you with individualism...while cursing you with differences. Before long, you all turn on each other, descending into a battle royale that will not stop until one finally ascends to godhood.

Endogenesis is a competitive arena-styled card game. Collect skills from the Realm of Knowledge to customize your character with different powers, and upgrade them with shards that you can earn by defeating your enemies. Also joining the fray are vicious monsters from the Realm of Chaos. The most powerful of these are called Legendaries; killing them rewards its slayer with a prism. Be the first to collect three prisms and you win!

—description from the designer

You've built housing for humanity in neighborhoods and New Las Vegas. Now you need to save humanity through space colonization...

Welcome to the Moon uses the same flip-and-write game mechanisms as the earlier title Welcome To..., but now you can play in a campaign across eight adventure sheets. On a turn, you flip cards from three stacks to create three different combinations of a starship number and a corresponding action, then all players choose one of these three combinations. You use the number to fill a space in a zone on your adventure sheet in numerical order, and everyone is racing to be the first to complete common missions.

The eight adventure sheets feature very different mechanisms from the classic Welcome To... concept, and when you play in campaign mode, you'll make choices that change the next adventure, which means that each campaign will differ from the previous one.

Neoville is looking for architects to build a city that is a combination of human habitation and the natural world. Are you up to the challenge? Position tiles strategically to build skyscrapers and utilities in your 4×4 city. Skyscrapers will be worth harmony points at the end of the game based on their value and district size. Utilities will be worth harmony points when their position in the city fits their own requirements. However, skyscrapers or utilities that do not meet their requirements will count as negative points! Who will design the most harmonious city with nature?

—description from the publisher

In Gravwell, players command spaceships that have been pulled through a black hole, transporting them into a different dimension. With each ship lacking fuel to get home, each player must collect basic elements from surrounding asteroids, using the gravity of the dimension and what little resources they have in order to reach the warp gate that will take them home. But in this dimension, moving ships will travel towards the nearest object, which is usually another ship, and when those objects are moving either forward or backward, reaching the warp gate isn't always easy. Time is running out to save your crew and your ship! As a grim reminder of the cost of failing to escape, the frozen hulks of dead spacecraft litter the escape route — but with careful card play, you can slingshot past these derelict craft and be the first to escape from the Gravwell!

Gravwell uses 26 alphabetized cards to determine movement order and thrust; most cards move your ship towards the nearest object, but a few move you away from it. At the start of each round, players draft fuel cards, picking up three pairs of two cards, with only the top card of each pile being visible; you get some information as to which moves you can expect from the other spaceships, but you won't know which moves you'll be forced to make when you draft your cards!

During a round, each player will play all of their fuel cards in the order of their choosing. During each phase of a round, each player chooses one card, then all cards are revealed and resolved in alphabetical order. When your opponents move in ways you didn't expect, you won't always be heading in the direction you thought you would! Each player holds an "Emergency Stop" card that they may tactically play only once per round to avoid such a situation.

Whoever first reaches the warp gate wins, but if no one has escaped after six rounds, then the player who is closest to the gate wins.

Gravwell: 2nd Edition features the same gameplay as earlier editions of the game, but now 40 fuel cards are included, which allows up to six players in the game at the same time. (Earlier editions maxed out at four players.) Additionally, ship ability cards are included that can give a unique power to each ship's captain trying to find their way home.

The Menace Among Us is a semi-cooperative game of intrigue and survival in deep space. Adrift and powerless, your crippled vessel is bleeding oxygen. As you effect repairs, every breath you take brings you one step closer to death. You must work together to restore power before the air runs out — but hidden among you, as loyal friends and crew members, are imposters who have infiltrated security and continue to sabotage the ship. Their only goal is to avoid detection and kill the crew, by force or by asphyxiation. Can you identify them in time and eliminate the threat? Or will succumb to the menace among us?

The Menace Among Us is a 40 to 60-minute, asymmetrical card game for 4-8 players. Each player chooses an Agenda at random, either a loyal Crew member, a deadly Menace or the Coward, who’ll take any side just to survive. Your Agenda card sets a Team Goal and an Individual Goal, as well as outlines any special abilities and the card composition of your individual 13-card deck. Then, knowing your Agenda and Goals, you choose a Character who you believe will best help you achieve them or mask your true identity. Characters add 7 new cards to your deck, shuffle-building a unique combination of cards, as well as provide you two specialized Above Deck Actions.

In this hidden traitor game, how you play your cards and abilities is far more important than the meta game aspects of accusations and denials. Cards are played face down and shuffled together as “Below Deck Actions.” Here, Menace players secretly sabotage the ship’s systems and attack crew members, who are trying to save the ship with their cards. If too few crew members risk going below deck to effect repairs, the ship’s Emergency Maintenance Assistant (EmMA) adds cards to the pile to help. However, the system has also been compromised and occasionally places damaging cards into the mix, providing plausible deniability to the Menace players. In contrast, Above Deck Actions are conducted in full view of the crew. Most of these abilities have costs, either in Energy or Oxygen, both resources the crew is trying to increase. So, while The Doctor has the ability to heal a crew member and remove a debilitating effect, a Menace player, who may be secretly in control of The Doctor, cares far more that it costs 2 Oxygen to perform the healing.

At some point, someone’s behavior will raise suspicion. But, did they do so because they are trying to fulfill an Individual Goal – or are they a Menace? You can call a vote to expose their true nature. But if they are a loyal Crew member, you’ve just blown precious Oxygen in the effort to detain them. For that matter, was it a Menace player calling the vote in hopes of wasting the air on purpose?

If the Crew can find and eliminate the Menace players – and raise the Energy to a safe threshold before the air runs out, they win. If the Menace can prevent this or kill the crew outright, their mission succeeds. Special commendations are awarded for surviving and for achieving your Individual Goal.

—description from publisher