STARFALL 2 THE GAME PLUS
STARFALL 2 THE GAME SERIES

STARFALL 2 THE GAME SERIES

He’s the designer behind the Tiny Epic series of games from Gamelyn Games, as well as the time-traveling Loop, Inc. I first heard about StarFall at Gen Con 2016, when IDW showed me a prototype of the game, and I’ve been excited to try it because I’ve liked a lot of Scott Almes’ game designs. The Player Aid tile outlines the end-game scoring. Stardust: Any remaining stardust tokens are worth 1 point for every 2 stardust remaining.

STARFALL 2 THE GAME PLUS

Nebulae: 2 points each, plus you get a bonus for each unique color you have.For instance, if you have one, it’s worth 3 points if you have two, they’re worth 4 points each. Comets: Worth more points the more you have.Black Holes: Lose 5 points if you have one, or gain 15 points total if you have two or more.(Each planet may be paired with only one moon.) Moons: 3 points each, but each moon must have a planet to pair with it, or it is worth 0.Stars: The player with the most stars gets 10 points in a 3- or 4-player game, the player with the fewest stars loses 5 points.Then you add up scores based on the objects you have on your collection of tiles. There is only one sky tile left on the board and none in the stack.Hard at work discovering astronomical objects. Sky tiles used for discovery are discarded and removed from the game. (If you take a sky tile from the ‘0’ spot of the board, you get it for free.) You may pay with any combination of stardust tokens and stars on sky tiles you have previously discovered, but you do not get any change from sky tiles. To discover a sky tile, take a sky tile from the stargazer board and pay stardust as indicated by the cost on the stargazer board. To move a sky tile, pick any of the tiles on the board, and move it down to the next open spot (jumping over other sky tiles if necessary). There can only be 3 sky tiles on the stargazer board at any time. To add a sky tile, draw one from the stack, and place it face-up on the highest empty spot on the stargazer board. On your turn, you will take one of the following actions: The Stargazer board, with three sky tiles. Place the stargazer board in the center of the table. If you’re playing with 2 or 3 players, you will remove a certain number of tiles before starting. Shuffle the sky tiles face-down and make a stack. The extra pieces form a bank used for making change. To set up, give each player 32 stardust points-7 white and 5 orange (which are worth 5 stardust each). The goal of the game is to score the most points by collecting particular sets of heavenly bodies on sky tiles. If it were a smaller box, I’d also be more likely to take the game with me when traveling, but as it is I’d have to pull it out of the box. One of my friends, upon seeing the contents, said “that box is an insult to my shelf space.” The box itself is actually quite nice-it has spot UV printing so that the stars and various design elements are shiny and stand out, but it’s so unnecessary for it to be this size. The plastic insert is so shallow that you expect there to be something under it. The Stargazer board is pretty, but really all you need is some way to have numbers from 0 to 9-the center of the board is not used at all.

My only real complaint is that the game really could have fit in a much smaller package. It’s easy enough to correct, but seems a shame this wasn’t caught before printing. However, there is a typo on the Player Aid tiles for the nebula scoring, which is rather unfortunate: it should list bonuses for 2, 3, 4 and 5 colors, but instead it references 3, 4, 5, and 5. The cardboard components are pretty good quality-nothing spectacular or shoddy there-and the Player Aid tiles are coaster-sized cardboard rectangles rather than cards. The stardust tokens are very nice: tiny wooden 7-pointed stars. There are nice background patterns and designs on the sky tiles and the stargazer board that are purely decorative, but add nicely to the astronomy theme. The components for StarFall are very pretty-there’s a blue/orange/white color palette for most of it, reflecting the box cover, that is fitting for a game about gazing at the night sky.

60 Stardust tokens (40 small white, 20 large orange).

The theme and gameplay would be fine for players as young as 8, though younger players may not grasp the strategy or may not be able to calculate scores as quickly during the game. It retails for $29.99 and is available now. At the Royal Hinterland Observatory, you and your fellow astronomers compete to discover the best patterns of heavenly bodies in this “game of clever astronomy”: StarFall.Īt a glance: StarFall is a game by Scott Almes for 2 to 4 players, ages 13 and up, and takes about 30 minutes to play.

Starfall 2 the game