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Your civilization has reached the stars, and your population is hungry for discovery. Explore, colonize, research — but be sure to build up your strength to be ready for the dangers that await!
One Deck Galaxy is a co-op space civilization-building game using only cards, dice, and tokens. Each card in the deck represents both a location in space your civilization has scouted, but also the benefits it could reap by colonizing or studying it. These benefits increase your ability to roll dice and manipulate them, and help your civilization grow stronger. When the deck runs out, the era advances and your foes become more dangerous. If you’re not ready, they may overwhelm you and send your empire into decline before it can become truly great!
Ages | 14+ |
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Players | Solo, 2 Players |
Play Time | 30m – 60m |
Designer | Chris Cieslik |
Mechanics | Cooperative Game, Deck, Bag, and Pool Building, Melding and Splaying, Move Through Deck |
Theme | Card Game, Dice, Space Exploration |
Publisher | Asmadi Games |
Kira0403
I hated ODD, but really love this one. The reason is that in ODG you always have so much stuff to do, all dice are usable one way or another. There're no situations when I can't do anything like there're in ODD. There're no dead turns. And it's so satisfying to build you federation, it's pretty much engine building. Way-way better and more clever than in ODD. The game is tough but unlike ODD it's reasonably tough and beatable. The dice manipulation mechanic is fantastic here. Game has enough of different adversaries and homeworlds/societies to choose from, all of which force you to play drastically different. And I mean it - one game session I may have lots of colonies, another session - 1 or even none. Same goes for tech. It's partly dictated by adversary and homeworld/society combination - you'll need to go for different things. So replayability is absolutely here, the game doesn't feel even close to samey after dosens of plays on normal difficulty. Then you have harder and mini-campaigns. From my perspective this game is incredibly well balanced. Any combination of Homeworld/Society and Adversary works well even on Hard difficulty (with some combinations being harder but that's reasonable). Plays in about an hour. Fantastic solo game! Will never leave my collection! One thing though - this game opens itself and shows you its full potential only after several plays with different adversaries and homeworlds/societies and once you start to understand how everything works. So first impressions might be deceiving.
apoQ
If this game had clearer and more organized rulebook, and better and clearer videos by the developer/publisher it would be far more enjoyable. I rate it high because of its potential and enjoyability after the giant grind of trying to understand the rules clearly. There are not a lot of videos on it on Youtube nor on any other place and this has been released for a long time now. The dev said he is going to upload more produced videos on it but that simply has not happened and the only video there is, is very confusing with the dev cheating and skipping steps ahead, not explaining in a simple manner the step-by-step process. The game is very fun once you get to grips with it but I find that it's one of the cases where the 30-60min sessions is just a lie. This one has been 90mins+ for me so I would recommend you block out at least 2h of your day for your first couple of solo playthroughs.
Cosmitz
With the caveat that the rules are better learned in the digital edition before physical play, and that it's highly recommended to make sure you're learning off the 1.1v manual when you do eventually crack open the physical game... One Deck Galaxy is probably one of the best smallbox 1/2p coop challenge puzzle game if you enjoy dice manipulation and dice placement. The game features a set races, societies and adversaries, of different difficulty levels, that you can mesh together to create a variable difficulty as well as enhancing replayability. The core of the game extremely solid, dice all feel really good to be used all over the board, you never really feel bad for rolling even lows, because often enough, they do have a good use. It never feels like you're running down the clock hoping for another round to finally roll that set of 6's that you want and that's crucial, as the entire game pivots on the 'timer' of the Galaxy deck. Speaking of, the Galaxy deck is the lynchpin of the entire game. It acts as a timer, as counters for a lot of elements of the game, as well as just location/encounter cards for us to interact with. The deck is meant to be reshuffled, but each time you do this, the Adversary you're fighting does something really bad. It's really interesting how the game flows with these elements. If you are stockpiling too many fleets, or science, or have multiple influence on locations, that's all tracked with Galaxy cards which do NOT get shuffled in a reshuffle, you end up with a smaller deck to go through this run around, making the Adversary strike sooner. It's also really cool that while some Adversaries require you to stomp them out quickly, acting fast and leaving room for a breezy ride into the sunset for the final strike, others get harder as you progress, requiring smarter play and stockpiling, making sure the final stages are hashed out quicker. The 1P/2P modes are balanced well, and what it comes down to really is that in 2P, or more to the point using 2 races/societies instead of one, just ends up as more mental bandwidth required, with varying possibilities and a lot more to accomplish. Inherently harder to 'two hand' play 2P as solo, but also there's a reason for another player at a table, mostly just adding another mind. You can play with a single race/society with two players just fine and it might be easier with more limited options, but more powerful singular die draws. All in all, i highly recommend One Deck Galaxy for anyone looking for a heavy but compact solo/coop-vs-board experience.