Prepare for Liftoff!

We had the pleasure of trying out Galactic Cruise. It's a game that first got on our (and probably everyone’s) radar when its cover art was revealed - made by none other than Ian O'Toole! Since then we have been really interested in finding out what the game is actually like, and as there are probably many others too, I’d like to share our thoughts after a few games.

Theme

Galactic Cruise is a mid-heavy weight euro about running a space travel agency. Players are all supervisors of said agency and are building spaceships and equipping them with different segments (entertainment venues for guests on days spent in space), developing new technologies, expanding their workforce, trying to complete company goals, scheduling cruises, advertising them and selling tickets, and of course launching these for profit. Whoever does this best will become CEO of the company!

This theme is integrated really nicely into the game. Every action has something to do with planning or executing these launches and they have some thematic explanations too. Certain actions will be beneficial for everyone, like refilling the resource silo or a display of cards, which feeds into the ‘everyone in the same company’ setting. Plus there is additional flavor thanks to Agenda cards and the types of segments you can build into your ships!

Gameplay

The game itself is mainly about worker placement and resource management, which probably doesn’t clarify much, as there are so many different implementations of this mechanic. So let’s dive a bit deeper into its inner workings.

Whenever it is your turn you can either:
- Place a worker
- Launch a cruise
- Call back your workers, collect income and do one action

Worker placement itself seems simple at first: you can go to one of 6 spots, potentially bumping off rival workers if they are there (bumping means they get to reuse the worker and get an income bonus, so you are usually trying to avoid this). There are a couple of details that make it much more interesting than it may sound:
- By placing a worker you can take 2 available actions
- Placing Development tokens between the worker spots allows you to use actions on adjacent spots too, making you more flexible in your action choices
- The 12 actions of the game are randomly allocated to the 6 spots, so combinations will change between games.
- Expert workers can be unlocked that have a special ability, which is different for each game depending on a tile randomly chosen at setup.

An essential thing is the namesake of the game: Launching galactic cruises! If you’ve prepared everything (scheduled a cruise, sold tickets, have a ship with cabins, enough food, oxygen and fuel), you get to launch a spaceship. This will then trigger bonuses each turn depending on the type of destination and passengers on board, until the ship returns to Earth. You also lose a worker for those turns, as it acts like a pilot.

I won’t go into details about the 12 actions themselves - they’re basically things I have mentioned in the Theme chapter above. There are 3 resources you manage on your player board: food, oxygen and fuel, for which storage is limited at first, but will grow as you place out development tokens. You also have Money and Ads that are needed for all kinds of things. I like how there are multiple ways to get resources, and you are mostly free to do actions as you want, so you never feel shoehorned into specific action sequences. There is also a reputation track that you sometimes see in games - being high on the track will earn you points, but you could spend down to get bonus resources, which is a big help in tight situations.

Another thing I really enjoy are the agenda cards. These add lots of flavor - both thematically and mechanically. They can be played during the depicted action to do a modified (much stronger) version of it, or discarded for a bonus resource.

As players complete public objectives or launch cruises, they will place out cubes on the Progress Track, which will trigger 2 interim scorings, then finally the 3rd and final end-game scoring.

As the game goes on you get more versatile: you have more flexibility to choose actions, get access to public techs or unlock special abilities from your player board, and you can also improve your income bonuses. Galactic Cruise has amazing replayability thanks partly to these, and also to many things that are randomized at setup - like the Expert worker abilities, goals, techs, action locations or passenger bonuses. These will change up your strategies each game.

Playing with 2 players

I want to go into the 2p aspect of the game, as this is our most common player count. It’s always essential for us that games function well this way. Many despise the thought of having special rules for 2p, but I actually love when there are some good working tweaks for this player count in games that need them. Galactic Cruise does a great job in this regard!

Player interaction is quite prevalent in the game. Other than drafting things away from others, you are also bumping each other off, triggering income bonuses and you can also use the development tokens of others to activate actions or use technologies - which is why the two neutral workers in 2p games come in clutch.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to manage a dummy player or something like that. These are just workers that are bumped clockwise if you go to their location, possibly knocking your real opponent off of a spot. As the game goes on, neutral development tokens are also randomly placed down. These workers and tokens help fill up the board, so you and your rival don’t just avoid each other all game long. It’s really simple but works effectively!

It perhaps even adds an additional layer of strategy to the game instead of simulating a 3-4p game, as e.g. you could position yourself so your opponent has no choice but to bump the neutral worker which then bumps you.

Conclusion

I normally like to stay objective as much as possible with Kickstarter previews and let people decide for themselves, but I do have to say we really enjoyed playing Galactic Cruise, and how it provides you with short and long-term goals, crunchy decisions and satisfying combos. Since to my knowledge the gameplay is finished when writing this, I think I can say that it’s an outstanding gem of a mid-heavy euro that ticks all the right boxes for us.