Silicon Saga is live (Dangers of a spaceship Wreck)
Update: Silicon Saga: Wreck of the Andromeda is live on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 29 days. You may back the Core game or choose the edition with the 6th player expansion. For an extra cost, you can also get all unlocked add-ons and your name credited in the rulebook.
Our preview post below was published on February 12.
Silicon Saga: Wreck of the Andromeda is a 1-4 player space crawl game in which a team of space marauders is trying to gather loot from a seemingly abandoned space ship. It supports cooperative, competitive and solo play, and it will launch on Kickstarter on February 16.
In Silicon Saga, your goal is to return to the hangar with a certain amount of silicon. You will first select your character - each of them has a special ability, a deck of Skill cards, two Gear cards and two Assist cards - and also select the Threat you will be facing. Threats have their own board and deck of cards.
Each round has a Crew phase, a Threat phase, and a Recovery phase. In the Crew phase, each character performs a free Search action, and then draws two Skill cards from their deck and performs 3 actions. These actions are: Trade item cards with another character, Perform your special character action, Interact with specific spots on the tiles, Play Skill or Gear cards from your hand, or Search a space that contains a question mark token. When you search, you may find an item or gear, encounter a survivor, or get an event.
When you encounter a friendly or hostile entity, you will play cards from your hand trying to meet the requirements of the encounter. Other characters may assist you with their own cards, although this may cost them in cards during their own turn. When you shoot an entity, you draw cubes from a bag that determine how much damage you deal. If the entity is not hostile, you may also face it with dialogue cards.
In the Threat phase, you advance the marker on the track of the Threat card. When it reaches certain points, you have to encounter the Threat or add more survivors in the encounter deck. If the Threat marker ever reaches the end of the track, you lose the game. If you wish to play pure solo, there are solo challenges that you can try to fulfill.
I like the overall premise of the game: space marauders lookin' for loot. To me, it's a realistic scenario of the future.