Space Explorers Review – All the Style of the Space Race, None of the Momentum

Space Explorers came out during a time when everyone was looking for the next game to take over Splendor, the fast-paced game of gem collection. Among the competition, Century: Spice Road a similar game whose focus was on building a hand of trade cards, led the way.

But there was another contender that reviewers were raving about. A board game that took the gameplay from Splendor but added card powers, and additional resources, and changed the theme to mission control. Yes, you guessed it that game was Space Explorers.

Yet, according to Board Game Geek statistics, Space Explorers never left the ground. Despite it offering more compelling and complex gameplay and a more interesting theme than Splendor.

Leaving me with the question, where did it all go wrong?

Disclaimer: Space Explorer’s theme includes Russian space exploration. Given the current state of the world, this may be triggering for some. To support Ukraine throughout this moment in history, you can donate to the United24.

The Red Light, Green Light Nature of Space Exploration

Space Explorers begins with each player given a card, five research tokens, and a goal. Either recruit twelve specialists into your NASA-like corporation or complete all of the projects offered by the government.

On your turn, you’ll be able to reserve a specialist card from the central market, or the top of the deck. Alternatively, you can recruit a specialist card into your corporation by paying the necessary costs in research tokens.

This is when things get a bit wibbly-wobbly. The cost of these specialists is discounted by the number of specialists of the same type you already own. Then you can pay for the rest of the research by:

• Giving the matching research tokens to the player on the left
• Returning specialists from your hand to the market for two research tokens
• Using card abilities that give research tokens

While all these options give you more freedom to pay for cards. Not all of these methods are as intuitive as they should be. Instead, it feels like there’s unneeded complexity in figuring out if you can buy cards. Making the purchase process feel less fun and more like you’re juggling payment methods at the cashier. Stressful, as you’re ever conscious of the line behind you growing in length and frustration.

It ruins the tempo of the game, as buying a card is rarely a simple decision. It takes time to figure out if you have enough research to buy one card, and more time recalculating once you realise you can’t. Compared to games like Splendor, and Century, where the turns are quick and free-flowing like Bruce Lee. Space Explorers‘ turns end up more like me: an uncoordinated, janky white guy who would second guess his every move in a fight.

Deciphering the Launch Codes

Amplifying this stop-start nature is the symbology used throughout the game. Beyond the 10 different symbols for divisions and research tokens, there are another 30 combinations of other symbols found on the specialist cards.

These special abilities, which activate when a specialist is added to your stable, add so much depth to Space Explorers. As they’re only effective when they’re the top card of that type. Meaning while they come and go frequently, you have to be on top of which skills you currently have active and whether they’re worth swapping out for points.

This makes for compelling gameplay, but it takes a while to overcome the tsunami of hieroglyphics, which are too small, and too complex a visual to understand at first glance. To help, there is a player aid but the symbols are difficult to pick up, and as such, you’ll spend a lot of time using the player aid like a foreign language dictionary and you’re lost in Japan.

It takes me back to my review of Get Adler! wherein talking to the designer they mentioned they avoided language on cards to make it easier to translate into different languages.

Space Explorers fell into the same trap.

Comparing Space Explorers to Terraforming Mars, the latter is more complex and has a million and one card effects and no need for a player aid. This is because what each card does is spelled out in plain English. It’s a difficult decision for publishers, as I imagine it increases costs. But if it’s the difference between being able to pull your game off the shelf without having to study a second language. Then it’s worth every cent.

Ready for Blast Off

Outside of the mountain of icons, and difficulty in figuring out your research budget the gameplay is as you’d expect from a more complex and strategic version of Splendor.

As for the rest of the production, I enjoyed how Russian history was incorporated. Rarely do we see the other side of the space race. So I found it interesting to explore the different cultural and historical milestones.

I also loved the art direction within Space Explorers. The card borders are eggshell instead of white, so when combined with the card art makes the game feel straight out of the 60s. Although, they could have used more of this card art, as they reused the same six pieces for all sixty of the cards.

Overall, Space Explorers is a solid game where people who know what they’re in for and enjoy the heavier board games will find a lot to love. For me, I think it misses the mark, particularly when it comes to speed of play. However, and to its credit, Space Explorers has laid the terrific groundwork for what a true Splendor killer looks like.