WBG Score: 8
Player Count: 2-8
You’ll like this if you like: What Came First, Wits and Wagers, Shot in the Dark
Published by: Big Potato
Shoot for the Stars is an absolute blast! (Pun intended) Sometimes, a game comes around that just hits with you from the off. That was the case with this game. From receiving the game, I think it took 15 minutes to open, learn, teach, and then start playing our first game. It's just so accessible. So fun. So good. Lets find out more and get it to the table.
Set Up
Ok, the first time you play this, you will need to build the space ship. And that was what took most of the 15 minutes I spoke about above! But it's simple, quite fun, and only needs to be done once. When that is done, lay out the board, questions, score tokens, and place the ship on the board. Give each player a meeple and character token and you can begin!
How to Play
Choose the first player, and they will read out the first question. Make sure their meeple is in the very top spot on the ship. They are the current captain. Once they have read out the question, they then must give an answer. All questions are number based and you need to try and get as close to the answer as you can without going over. If in doubt, go low!
Then the next player to your right will give their answer. They can either say a larger number out loud if they think you are too low, in which case they will become the new captain. Or they can agree you are roughly right and stay in the ship. Or finally, they can say they think you went way over the answer and abandon ship, moving onto one of the planets on the board. Either one, but we usually went to our own coloured planet for simplicity. (And my minor autistic needs).
The game then moves to the next player. This will go round like this until all players have either jumped out of the ship or agreed that the previous number was about right. At this point, the current captain will reveal the answer by puling the card out of the box. If they were correct or under the answer, the captain will gain four star coins. All other players still in the ship gain two. Anyone who jumped out gets nothing. If the captain is wrong, then they will loose a star coin, every else on the planets gets two star coins, and those still on the ship gets nothing.
If the captain is the only one left on the ship, as in everyone else thinks they went too high, but they were correct, then they get six star coins. If they were wrong, they only lose one star coin in this case.
The final thing you can do is call "Moonshot." This is when you think you can get the answer 100% correct. Dead on. If you are right, then you will get eight star coins, and anyone who stayed with you also scores three. But if you are wrong, then you loose two star coins and anyone who abandoned ship gets one. That's the whole game. You can play to a time limit, points limit, or as the game suggests, using eight question cards. But that is never long enough for us!
The sort of questions you get are either one of the three special types above, or a basic question like the three examples below.
The questions with the meeple icon on are always specific to the group currently playing the game. So the card won't have an answer on. You need to work it out yourselves first as a individuals. Guess everyone else's answer and tally up what you think the total to be. Then all players will give their answers as usual, before revealing their own correct answer. Then the group can tally the total and their combined correct answer to work out who came closest. This can be a lot of fun, but be warned, learn about your friends cousins before playing! It may be useful!
The question with the QR code shows live data. Questions with answers that are ever changing so the publisher cannot possibly print an answer as it would immediately go out of date. But the QR code will take you to a website that will give you the current accurate answer. What a cool idea!
The questions with the calendar icon on work just the same as the normal questions, but the answer will be a date. Start with a low date and work up from there. It's the same rules as usual. Just don't say a date beyond what you think the correct one will be.
The normal questions are all interesting, and guessable. Playing with all ages and abilities, I have found this game to be highly accessible. Sometimes, a younger player may be the captain at the start of a question they have no idea too, but this is fine. They can just go very low, even just say "one," as other players guesses will then inevitable go higher, and give them an idea as to what a closer guess may be. And they can then either up their answer, or stay in the ship backing another players answer.
Many questions have sparked some fun debate amongst our groups as we played this. Some of the things you learn are funny. Some very interesting. And others down right unbelievable! You wait until you see the question about the amount of beer drunk in one night by one person! I couldn't believe it.
The game is a little over produced for a simple question and answer game, but I love that. It adds to the spectacle and theme. But actually helps with the game too. Whenever someone up's the current answer, and becomes the new captain, you move your meeple to the top space of the ship to represent your current status. Players physically move off the ship if they think the answer has gone too high. They stay on if they are still in and agree with the current answer or want to wait for their next turn to up it. This all looks great but also reminds all players exactly what their and all players current situation is.
The character tokens remind you which meeple you are, and the points tokens are just a nice touch to physically track your progress. All of this could be removed. It could just be the questions and that's it. But that wouldn't be half as much fun!
When I played this with my mum, she said it was her "favourite game yet!" And I make her play a lot of games! My friends all really enjoyed it's accessibility. My kids enjoyed the fact they could join in what they said felt like a grown up game. And I very much enjoyed the debate that many questions sparked. This game is so sociable.
Shoot for the Stars is a brilliant quiz based game. It brings a nice theme to the table, looks impressive set up, and offers all the tools needed for a long, fun, enjoyable session of quizzing and debating. You can make it short if you like, that's the proper rules after all. Eight cards, and that's it. That would take around 20 minutes if you played quickly. But each time I have played this game, and it has been six times in four days so far, we have played for well over an hour each time. We just didn't want to stop as we were having too much fun!