Space Gate Odyssey Review

Matt: Space Gate Odyssey features your favourite tv show team exploring new worlds and defeating the alien menace –

Robin: It has nothing to do with Star Gate.

Matt: What? You mean I don’t get to raise my eyebrow like Teal’c whenever someone says it’s my turn?

Robin: Indeed.

Matt: Or yell Chevrons locked when I open a gate?

Robin: Just stop.

Players: 2-4
Time: 90 mins
Designer: Cédric Lefebvre
Artist: Vincent Dutrait
Publisher: Ludonaute

---

Matt: Space Gate Odyssey sadly has nothing to do with Star Gate, in fact only flirting with IP infringement because of its system of warping people across space, through gates. Put noughties sci-fi out of your mind. This is the great colonisation effort. A panoply of new worlds and you, the confederations(?) sending people there. For points!

On the surface (oh ho ho! Yes, see surface! Of planets…!) Space Gate Odyssey is an area control game. The majority of your points will come from getting people down on to those planets before they fill up. The exciting thing is that each of these worlds is different, with different scoring opportunities and placement rules. You might have an icy globe where life (and points) cling to the slopes of vast volcanoes, the ocean planet whose islands serve as miniature area control zones, or the jungle world where forging paths through the trees is further rewarded.

That’s a nice twist. And as you’ll only see 5 of the 8 planets in a given game, there’s a nice bit of variety there too. In theory. But while the planets are the goal they are very much a blip on your horizon. More an artist’s impression in a travel guide that you glance at between tasks in your day to day grind; a reminder of what you’re working for. 

And why shouldn’t the planets feel that way? After all, it is not you who will be travelling there. Your duty is to drive colonists through your halls as efficiently as possible. For them is the excitement of an untouched world. Though the callous indifference with which you send them to verdant paradise or desolate wasteland casts a dark note on this system. They are all faceless meeples to you, after all.

No, the focus of your attention is the space station.

Starting from nothing more than a square airlock, you will expand outwards across the vacuum of your tabletop, tacking on corridors here, warp gates there, new airlocks and options and, with some care, closing off the openings to form a coherent whole. You are an architect, but also operations manager. Unlike the vast majority of board game constructions, this is a living structure, and you are responsible for directing that life to best effect.

Colonists will be brought aboard the station through the airlocks, as in your starting piece. You will move them through the station, aiming to eventually bring them to the warp gate rooms you’ll have built, and from there down to the corresponding planet, to sing your praises and earn you those precious points. Which immediately presents an obvious construction: the warp gate/airlock pair. Source and sink a minimal distance apart. Why, then, would you waste everyone’s time with corridors? Because of Space Gate Odyssey’s centrepiece, about which all else orbits: the control centre.

Welcome to the inner sanctum, only the most impressively sized meeples make it here. The 5 rooms of this central station represent the different actions you can take, and the more plastic pieces you have in a room the greater the action. But you’ll notice everyone has pieces all over – this is where things get interactive! One player will move one of their pieces to a room, clambering upon its cardboard table announcing with glee the start of the working day. Then, everyone with workers in that room will take the associated action. This is a game which wants you to care deeply about what your opponents are up to. It feels good to get big rewards from your opponent’s turn, and avoiding returning the favour adds an extra layer to your decisions. 

The timing matters too. Activating the airlock room (which fills airlocks with new colonists) when the other players all have full airlocks already is a fine way to make you feel smug. Likewise building up lots of plastic in a room will let you do frankly massive actions, but you’ll be missing out on the opportunities in other sections. Keeping your workers optimally distributed is the puzzle that keeps on puzzling, not least because you always have to move in to a room to activate it.

To add another layer of nuance, there are different types of workers available to fill your station. Basic workers, the chaps doing star jumps, can be placed inside the suit pieces to become twice as powerful. But they are still just one person when it comes to moving between action rooms. The daleks/robots, on the other hand can never move once they are installed on a space. I guess everything is connected by stairs? 

Gaining new pieces only occurs by building corridors, each of which has a particular piece depicted on it. Corridors therefore increase your action efficiency, but decrease the efficiency of that part of your space station. It’s this interplay that makes for an interesting puzzle. Everything gives and takes away in equal measure, and it is tied in neatly with the design of your station. It is a pity then that the puzzle doesn’t stay interesting for very long.

The rules for moving your colonists feel at fault here. The blue, green and pink actions let you move colonists into the correspondingly coloured rooms of your station, with each thing in that action space contributing one space worth of movement. It is therefore better to build 3 differently coloured wings of your station, to enable single meeples to rapidly cross through multiple rooms if they need to. Once you realise this, and the airlock/warp gate room combo, much of the magic of construction is gone. The question surrounding corridors is furthermore too well balanced, such that it is ultimately about preference rather than strategy. 

Aha! You say! But what of the end game scoring!? There are bonus points available for having the most of particular colours of room, or sets of all colours. The exact value of this majority is tied to an elaborate player controlled mechanic that initially appears exciting and worthy of attention, but is really just a distraction. The amount of points available are a pittance compared to the planets so to attach so much rules overhead and player interaction to it serves to trick new players into believing they should focus on it more than they actually should.

The central action selection remains engaging and is the game’s true strength. But much of the rest of Space Gate Odyssey’s features lose their lustre after a short while. The planet variability is felt more in rules overhead than in experiential impact, and the station building becomes broadly rote. It is still enjoyable to rush your colonists through your station at breakneck pace, but there is a long build up (literally and figuratively) to reach that reward, a core puzzle the game sells itself on but which doesn’t stay fresh. It is well worth experiencing, but perhaps not worth owning.

Rating: Space Gated

Our copy of Space Gate Odyssey was provided for review by Asmodee UK. You can pick up a copy for £47.99 RRP from your local hobby store.