Space Hoppers: Singko Academy
- Board's Eye View
- Jun 23
- 2 min read
We've always thought of Space Hoppers as inflatable bouncy sit-on toys but we've had to revise our thinking. In Orbiter & Rover's Space Hoppers, the 3-6 players are students enrolled in the interplanetary Singko Academy. Whether it's part of the curriculum or an activity for Spring Break, you're space hopping around the galaxy collecting 'souvenirs'; and the first player to collect five souvenirs is the winner.
This is a card game with a party-game vibe. You'll first need to assemble your crew for your space hops so you can use their skill stats to meet the requirements set out on the Encounters that will earn you those coveted souvenirs. You can get the game off to a quick start by just dealing four crew cards out randomly to each player but if you don't mind a slightly slower start, you may well prefer to lay out all the crew cards on the table and have players pick their crews through open drafting.
Don't expect it always to be easy tho' to meet the demands of an Encounter card. You'll find there's a wide variation between different Encounter card requirements: some just demand a specific stat totalled from all your crew, which is usually easy to satisy, but you might also hit an Encounter that only gives you a souvenir if your crew includes a specific named crew member! And not all the Encounter cards come with rewards: there are some cards that will lose you a souvenir unless you meet their specifications.
Each game will have its own special rules tweak (Hop card) but you can throw your own Monkey Wrench cards into the game engine to alter the rules or game state in your favour or as a 'take that' action on another player; for example, in response to another player's Encounter you might play a Monkey Wrench that switches crew members and so deprives them of the ability to meet the requirements of their Encounter.
Just like the game-changing cards in Fluxx (Looney Labs), it's the Monkey Wrench cards that cause the creative chaos that drives Space Hoppers. And there's no shortage of these cards because you almost always get to replace any Monkey Wrench you play, and if you draw a Monkey Wrench card you don't like you can always, as a free action, discard it to the bottom of the MW deck and draw a replacement. If you find the Monkey Wrench cards a tad too chaotic for your taste, designers Zach and Zella Mortensen offer the option of limiting their use so that, in games with 4-6 players, it's only the next two players who can monkey around with you when you attempt an Encounter, tho' of course there are still cards that let you vary turn order... There are other rule variants too; for example, you can give each player their own Hop card so that there is asymmetry in the rules applying to each player.
However you play, Space Hoppers Singko Academy makes for a light but fun space-themed 'take that' filler that you can play comfortably in around 15 minutes.
