The craziest cat game in the whole galaxy

What’s the craziest theme and/or artwork you’ve ever seen in games?
😸MLEM: Space Agency (or “Die Astrokatzen” in Germany) is sure close to that! It is a push-your-luck game of 🎲 dice rolling. Now I’m normally not one for RNG dice games, but I can 100% vouch for this one now! 😄 I think it’s mostly the crazy cat theme that does it for me, but there are also some cool design decisions that make it a fun time. The game comes with a colorful playmat depicting the outer space that your catstronauts will explore, with lots of funny details like planets that look like a scratching post or an aquarium.

Players will take turns becoming the captain of an expedition, launching to space on a rocket. 🚀 But here is the best part: 🧐 each time, every player will join the expedition, so they can stay engaged during the other captains’ turns, anticipating what the dice rolls bring - and they can get out any time if they think it’s too risky to proceed.

A captain will roll 6 dice as the expedition begins. Each space on the mat shows a few dice values that are usable when the rocket is there. You group your dice according to their rolled values and decide which ones to use, and move spaces according to their sum. Used dice are lost though (except for dice showing the comet symbol), so as the rocket moves out to deep space, you will have less and less dice (and thus chance) to roll the needed values. If none of the dice match what’s needed, the rocket crashes and the expedition is over. As you might think, these cat-astrophes will happen often. 😅

You want to reach as high as possible and leave the rocket to claim moons or planets with your cats for points. When someone places their 8th cat, the game is over. 🏁

I was glad to see that in spite of the dice randomness there is some player agency in the game: ☝️ You might not want to use up all groups of dice you can all the time. Sometimes it’s better to move less (and lose less dice). There are 3 additional modules that spice up the simple task of getting as far as possible by adding personal goals and special space tiles with bonuses. You might even see a UFO on your way! 😉