Celestia Review – Trusting Your Friends’ Fake Smiles Until the Ship Explodes

Welcome back to the board game arena! No, not that board game arena. In this arena, we review games and compare them head to head. The last time we saw Space Base knock out Machi Koro. But now for the main event, Incan Gold/Diamant versus the young, up-and-comer Celestia!

Both of these games are solid push-your-luck games that follow a similar gameplay loop. It’s all about the same question The Clash posed in 1981:

Well, come on and let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

Whereas Incan Gold has you crawling around dark dusty ruins with threats around every corner. Celestia is a sky-high adventure, during which you travel from island to island. Enjoying the sights and hoping that your pilot knows what they’re doing.

While everyone in Celestia has a hand of cards, the only hand that matters is the Captain’s. When you’re the captain, the first thing you’ll do is roll a couple of dice. At that point, you can assure the other players you have cards with symbols matching the dice rolled.

Then everyone has a choice to believe your fake smile or leave the airship. Once everyone’s decided, you reveal if you have the needed cards. If you did, hurray, the airship moves forward one island, and the next player becomes the captain. Otherwise, the ship crashes “unexpectedly” and mysteriously spawns back at the starting island.

Now if someone decided to leave the ship before you revealed your cards. They land on the current island and take a treasure card. They’ll take no part in your journey… Or crash.

The first person to reach fifty points in treasure cards wins the game.

All Aboard

Unlike Incan Gold which provides the same gameplay as a slot machine, there’s a lot of playfulness within Celestia. Especially, after the captain rolls their dice, and you begin to interrogate them. First, ask them if they have the cards, and then study every micro-emotion on their face. Then discuss amongst the rest of the table to gauge their feelings.

Incan Gold has a problem where you’re racing so fast to the next card draw that it becomes almost mechanical. It’s a snap decision and plays quickly – too quickly sometimes.

Celestia takes its time by adding a social round. This slows down the rhythm of the game and allows more thought, more discussion, and more fun.

Because on the flip side of guessing if the Captain has the cards or not. Is the Captain wanting everyone to stay on and go down with the ship if they don’t have the cards? So they’ll do their best to persuade you otherwise – which is often hilarious.

But it’s not all poking holes in the Captain’s poker face. When things go well, and you end up a couple of islands down the path, you’ll end up cheering them on. As you’re both in the same boat – literally – and want to go as far as you can.

From our plays, this doesn’t happen as often as you’d think. So when it does, everyone understands that something special is happening.

We Have a Winner!

If Celestia has one fault, it’s the special cards in the game. There aren’t many, but they have iconography that would not be out of place on cave walls. Meaning, to understand what they do you’ll need to reach for the game rules – a dead giveaway you have something special.

Then the cards themselves are quite difficult to understand. With different timings and abilities, they seem out of place for a family-friendly board game.

On the other hand, Celestia nails the visual aspect of the game, with the cardboard ship, and pawn passengers. It brings a tactility of staying, going, and flying the ship from island to island. Compared to Incan Gold which lies flat on the table.

Overall though, while I thoroughly enjoy Incan Gold’s simple, streamlined and refined gameplay. It lacks interactivity with other players. Celestia shines in this regard. Where the fun isn’t always in winning but in bluffing and goofing around as the captain. While there are a few more rules, this added interactivity more than makes up for it.

The feature picture was originally taken by Board Game Geek user Pongrácz Zsolt and is available under the BY-SA licence.