This is a prototype version of the game and does not represent the final quality or look of the game.
Every so often, a new game emerges that utterly captivates you. Sometimes, it's a release from a renowned publisher or designer that you've eagerly awaited for months, even years. You've followed every development closely, from design diaries to early glimpses. You've devoured "how to play" videos on YouTube. Other times, it's a complete surprise—a stranger reaching out with an offer to try their unknown game, and it's not just impressive; it's mind-blowing.
In truth, as I played it this weekend in my conservatory, the heat led me to voluntarily shed my socks to regulate my body temperature. But I'm almost certain that even if I had left them on, they would have been figuratively blown off by the sheer impact of the experience. This game is awesome.
The game is a giant tech-tree-building, territory-controlling, card-playing, race game. It looks epic. It feels epic. It plays epic.
The full version will play up to six players. This early pre-release version is up to four. But even in two, the game feels tense, combative, enthralling, and just simply put, very, very good.
The game is essentially a race to build three or more Refuge by the end of the fifth round. Each player starts with one Refuge site and four force tokens. These are essentially level one troops. You need to get eight troops onto a hex not adjacent to any other Refuge sites in order to build another Refuge.
Players start with two Zealots on their own player board. These are your workers in which you can carry out the various actions. There are two ways to play the game: the basic or advanced. In the basic version, your choices of actions are significantly reduced making it a perfect learning game. But we went straight into the full game as it looked too darn exciting!
The main actions are:
Move your troops on the board and gain the resource of the hex they finish on.
Add more troops, either four onto a refuge, or six around it and one on it.
Double the amount of troops on one hex.
Flip over a neighbouring tile to a Refuge you control to gain three times the value of that hex's resources, either something called Soylent or Desolene, and gain a Mangled Zealot. This is a worker you can use for one round before they become exhausted. You can also upgrade your Refuge to gain an additional permanent Zealot.
Construct Fabrication which increases the yield of your Refuge.
Develop one of your many tech trees to make your actions better.
Gain P.A.T.Z.E.R. tokens which can be used to develop your tech.
Or build a new Refuge.
You can do as many actions as you have Zealots, so getting more by upgrading is crucial.
As such, we found the game to have a delicious build. Rounds one to three build slowly as you develop your tech and Refuge. But round four and five explode with some truly amazing turns.
In the early games, I felt I was way behind and was never going to get close to building my third Refuge, but on each occasion, it happened with time to spare, and on most occasions, with time and resources to build my fourth and sometimes fifth Refuge as well.
This was because we were not fighting much. I think we got into the game so much, we did not focus on each other, instead concentrating on our own development, which is stupidly satisfying. But this led to drawn games. Which technically mean you should keep going until one player pulls ahead. But each time, we stopped, restarted, and tried again. This was because we wanted to learn the game from the beginning and try again to build up more efficiently. However, again, as we did not fight each other, it led to more draws.
In later games, we managed to find the balance between fighting and developing your own tech. It is very much like Scythe in this way. In that you don't really want to fight too much as it takes your focus away from your own development. But you need to do it to avoid other players developing at the same place. And the board is tight. As you cannot build next to other Refuge locations, you will quickly run out of convenient locations to build new ones. You may well have to go and destroy another player's to simply gain the building site.
Developing your tech is so fun though. And I can see why we were so preoccupied with this in our early games. Perhaps because we were playing mostly in a two, and had only one other player to worry about, it made it easier to do this. But in a three, I still found this was the case. Simply as developing your own abilities, gaining extra Zealot, and thus more turns, is just so fun. The game is a beautifully crafted, delightfully balanced, and wonderfully executed example of what modern board games can do. When you combine interesting mechanics, interesting lore, gorgeous art, and intriguing gameplay, you end up with something special. And that is exactly what has happened here.
The board is modular. The tiles slot neatly into cases which can be easily formed as they all snap together with tidy little magnets. This means you can form all sorts of shapes for your game board, and they will not slide around or get knocked out of place as you play. Something that drives me crazy in other games. Well done for this wonderfully solution!
The art on the game is simply stunning.
The cards are the best example of this, especially the Divine tech cards. Each round, one Divine tech card is revealed, offering game-changing powers for the first player who is able to buy this. They are great cards to acquire, but very hard to do so. Which is how it should be. So many games get it wrong by either giving you small upgrades only to avoid the game becoming unbalanced. Why not have huge awesome upgrades but make them hard to get so players who do manage to acquire them have to make sacrifices to do so, so other players don't feel bad if they miss out.
Fighting is an intriguing aspect of the game. Players tally up their troops on the hex in question, similar to Scythe. They can add extra tech powers they may have previously developed, as well as any Divine Tech cards they had bought. Additionally, players will play one card from their hand, either to boost their battle strength, which will cost them a fighter after the battle, or to weaken their opponent's strength after the fight, but also weaken themselves during. All players start with the same ten battle cards, making it a quick but engaging mini-game that keeps all players invested as they go head-to-head.
The winner will then be able to carry out bonus actions, based on their current Refuge level, such as to take troops from your opponent, harvest resources from the hex you just waged war over, or even level their Refuge to the ground! All players then receive a bonus of either a P.A.T.Z.E.R token for the loser, or a R.U.I.N. token (worth four P.A.T.Z.E.R tokens) for the winner.
The game runs through multiple phases across five rounds. It seems complicated at first, but most stages fly by. Essentially, you gain resources each round, take actions, then do your best to control the Ecolapse. The final phase where players need to destroy a hex neighboring one of their refuges. Something that can be very frustrating if you need that hex for resources in the next round. But you can avoid this through various powers or simply by paying the most cost in the voting round that precedes the Ecolapse round. But do you dare spend your resources in this way? What will the other players do? How much do you need to risk losing?
I cannot wait to play this game in higher player counts, and I am intrigued to see how this game develops. Everything about it has so clearly been crafted with love, attention to detail, and a knowledgeable mind of modern games. I cannot imagine this being anything other than a runaway success.