Point Galaxy

Well that escalated fast. First there was Point Salad (AEG) which had 1-6 players drafting vegetables and fulfilling salad bowl recipes. Then AEG/Flatout Games brought us Point City, reducing the player count to 1-4 but upping the ante from vegan recipes to city building. And with Point Galaxy we go way beyond mere cities or even countries or continents. Just as James Bond discovered in 1999, The World Is Not Enough; now we're developing entire solar systems!

Like its predecessors, Point Galaxy is designed by Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin and Shawn Stankewich, has art by Dylan Mangini, and it's a card drafting and set collection game that uses double-sided cards; in this case cards with planets on one side and suns and other space phenomena on the other. Whereas Point City layered quite a bit of additional complexity on the commendably super-simple Point Salad, AEG and Flatout Games have avoided the temptation to throw further complexity into the mix with the galactic theme. Instead, Point Galaxy is closer to the original game in the series.

In this game, the 1-5 players are each turn drafting two cards from a central display to build their own galaxy tableaus of solar systems. Planets that colour match a sun's icons are placed below that sun but they must ordinarily be in ascending or descending order. That means if I've placed out 7 and 6 planet cards, the next card I play to that location must be lower than 6. If I skip numbers I can't ordinarily add them later but there are special cards (wormholes) that give a workaround for this. Moons can be slotted in next to particular planets and will score additional points, and asteroids are played to suns. These then give end-game bonus points for the players who have the most in their galaxy.

There are research icons on cards that give you end-game set collection bonuses and, in addition to the cards, there are rocket-shaped tokens that can be selected for each five rocket icons you have in your tableau. These give you further unique ways of scoring. Some of these are likely to score you more points than others so it's usually worth making a push to collect the rocket icons so you can claim an early selection from the rocket tokens that are available.

Tho' gameplay for Point Galaxy is almost as straightforward as Point Salad, it's the multiple ways of scoring that differentiate this game. Do I take and place a card with an eye to its numerical value, optimising the scoring for the number of planets under a sun, or do I focus on the various card icons and the opportunities these offer for set collection and picking up rocket tokens? Tho' the game is easy to play, it can be slowed down by players who dither overly about their choice of which two cards to take on their turn.

We like the way the rocket tokens can help players to double down on the elements that they happen to be scoring well on. Some are worth palpably more than others so it' can be a race to get first dibs. Later in the game you might also want to nab a token to deny it to a rival player and there is bound to be potential competition for the same desirable card(s). Otherwise, tho', it's really just the asteroid majority over which you're directly competing. That means that players can mostly focus on their own tableaus without worrying overly about what other players have collected.

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