Searching for traces of extraterrestrial life
We’ve talked about 📡SETI before as we were fortunate enough to get to play two full games of it before #SPIEL24 , and while I normally prefer staying more objective in most posts, I can’t help but start by saying that this is probably the best game we’ve played this year 🥰 - and we’ve played a lot!
I think the primary reason is because it has a sort of tightness that requires you to cleverly plan ahead, yet there are still always multiple ways to get things done. There are so often rounds where I go like “OK, I think I have to pass now… or… Wait a minute!”, then I find some way to get a resource for another action, which then snowballs into multiple additional turns. It’s just so satisfying every time. 😁
🔁Replayability is also great thanks to a big deck of action cards, technologies to research, alien races to discover and random end game goals.
The game itself has a simple structure: 👉You play turns in clockwise order until everyone runs of resources and things to do - repeating this over 5 rounds. On your turn you can pick an action à la carte, which seems simple but it’s always interesting, especially as one of the actions is playing a card, which have all sorts of effects, often combinations or improvements of standard actions. There are also some free actions that can really spice up your turns. The primary restriction are your resources: energy ⚡and credits 💰. As there are only 2 resource types you need them for most actions, so you really have to be selective with what you do.
Games of SETI have a nice arc. While there isn’t very much engine building, you do improve your income and get techs that improve your main actions or give you additional ways to get resources. 🛰️ The map also nicely fills up with probes on and around planets, and you discover two alien species 👽 in a game that have their own cards, rules and side-mechanics! So looking back at what you achieved at the end of a game feels gratifying - and at the same time you are also ready for the next game to try some different things! 🙃
