Space Game Review

This review is about an pretty interesting game that likely nobody has played or heard before. The game is called Space game by Peter Robinson and it is made in Cape province in South Africa.

Travelling with a suitcase filled with the games, he met up with me at the cafe and introduced me to the game. He is so passionate about it that I ended up grabbing a few sets from him.

So is the game any good? Read on for the full review.

Game Components

The game set is very nicely packaged in the translucent plastic casing held together with a carrying string. This makes it an excellent game to play in indoors as well as outdoors.






As the casing are held together nicely, there is no worries about misplacing the lids.



The game pieces are made of plastic foam material and brightly colored making it really attractive. Though the pieces work perfectly fine in the game I feel that the pieces were a bit too light and would have preferred something slighly heavier. Plastic chips would have been better in my opinion.



The rulebook is only a page long and nicely laminated. Some board games have rulesbooks that are so thin that they got torn after awhile which is not an issue for this game. My only gripe is that the layout of the rules could have been better formatted. The rulebook looks too complicated considering that this game is really easy to learn.

Game Play

If you have played tic-tac-toe before, you know that there are 8 different ways of alignment. With the additional 2 layers, the number of different ways increases drastically to 49 which make for some interesting game play.



On the first look, the game looks very similar to a 3D version of tic-tac-toe but after playing the game, it is definitely much deeper than that. Instead of trying to be the first to form a sequence, the winner is actually the player that forms the most number of sequences when all the pieces are placed.

It might seem to be a minor variation but it actually open up various interesting strategies for the game. Should you focus on making sequences early in the game or should you strategize and lay out the pieces so that they can create multiple sequences? Try playing it with 4 teams and it can get really exciting as teammates try to support each other with the best strategy to win the game.

In additional, the designer actually came up with 14 different variations of game play at different level of difficulty which really give your brain a good workout.

Theme

In the Space game, the theme is about trying to align the planets together in space. The theme concept isn’t too bad. Sliver dust is mixed into its blue acrylic game board, trying to create a feel of space. It is a pity that the game pieces did not further build on this by using sphere pieces instead of flat round pieces.

Nevertheless, the theme isn’t a big issue as I personally don’t think that the theme is an important aspect for games in this genre.

Conclusion

The Space game is an abstract puzzle game. It is one of those game that is easy to pick up but really tough to master. The game is well made and designed. I also like the fact that the designer actually came up with many variations which makes the game highly replayable.

Where the Space game shines is in the team play mode where players cooperate to become the winner team. There are lots of interactions and the competition can be pretty intense if you have really good players playing this game. For those who enjoy the game Sequence, the Space game is definitely more challenging and involves deeper thinking.

This game is really new. Currently Peter is still trying to market this game on his own through the Space game website. Hopefully some game publishers would pick up this game as I think that it really has the potential of becoming popular in the mass market.



If you are keen in this game, you can give it a go the next time you are at Pitstop Café. We also have a few signed copies of the game for retail for those who are interested. For more information, visit the Space game website.

Pitstop Cafe, be part of the fun

WeeKee