For me, that game happened to Be Space Junkyard!
Game Objective and Win State:
The Goal of the game is simple, Collect as many parts for your ship as possible, faster than any of your other opponents. The only way to win is to have more victory points than your opponents! This can only be achieved by getting as many pieces as possible, though just because one has more pieces does not necessarily mean that they will have more points.
Mechanics:
The game's mechanics, unlike it's goal and win-state, are not so simple.
The whole game is based around resource: 3 different types of material that can be used as currency within the game to allow ship-parts to be attached to the main ships of each player, to allow for more victory points! (VP)
The three types of materials are:
- Radioactive
- Mechanic
- and Scrap-Metal
Gaining materials is tricky. Players all gain a Radioactive material at the beginning of the game, and use it as they continue, storing it within their ship, and spending it when necessary. Though the three are distinct, there is not much of a reason for their names outside of decoration. All they are used for is as currency to allow you to connect ship-parts, and gain VP.
Players start on each corner of the map, which is a 6x6 grid, created out of the supplied, and upside down, cards- all of which have their own specific and unique amount of asteroids and ships-parts with VP.
Players can move around the space of the game, or the map, 3 spaces at a time, in any direction they want as long as it is not diagonal. Players cannot move onto spaces that other players occupy, and must move around them or past them to continue. This opens up many different strategies for players to use in movement, while also making sure that they can always reach a floating piece of space-junk within the 6x6 square. Space junk can be either Asteroids, which have certain amount of materials corresponding to their colors, or VP-giving ship-parts.
After movement, the player has two options: Storing or Recycling.
- Storing allows players to take the junk(or ship parts) they find within the grid, and take it, connecting it to their ships to allow for them to attain VP. To attain it, the must have the necessary combination of resources to allow for the ship to remain connected. If they do not have the material, they must recycle the ship-part.
- Recycling is the most common, and trickiest of plays within the game. When players do not have enough materials, as they often do not, ship parts they encounter must be recycled. Once it is recycled, it is removed from play, and the resources that are available from the ship-part, are given to the player. This also applies to Storing cards.
This is a problem thanks to the way the ships are set up. Ships can only store a certain amount of materials within them. To hold more materials, you must attain more ships, and to attain more ships, you must have the necessary materials. It quickly becomes a game of spending, as players frivolously spend their resources when they can, or find themselves throwing a perfectly good ship part away, for resources they already have, and cannot carry more of.
After using a card, and taking whatever is on it (whether ship part or asteroid) Players can then finish their turn by placing a card from the pile of extra cards that the game provides, moving the 6x6 square's lines about, shooting players and cards off the game space. Cards that are "lost" within this movement are thrown out of the game, not to be used for the rest of it, while players are returned on whatever card they choose, on the side they were thrown out.
Players themselves learn resource management, and strategic placement and movement. During our play session, players were forcing themselves out of the game space so that they could put themselves into more strategic areas, thanks to the placement rule on players going out-of-bounds. Players would also do their best to collect as much resources as possible, and sacrificing when needed to be able to gain as much VP as possible.
The game itself has a problem with chance. The cards that are placed upside-down to create the 6x6 grid are all randomized and shuffled before hand, making the cards players land on completely random. This has players finding great VP giving parts early, when they have little resources, and low VP parts later on, when they finally do have the materials they need.
While simple at first, the mechanics of the game are very complex, and made the game seem to go on longer in time then it actually did. It also frustrated the players with the reliance on chance the game had, making it very hard to actually attain VP within the allotted time. Overall though, the game was fun and a good experience for those of us who played it.
