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In Horizons, you are a starfaring species taking the first steps into a new galaxy. Find new stars, explore new worlds, collect valuable resources, and secure allies to gain the most ground in expanding your empire! Build colonies and resource collectors to hold onto control in various, and increasingly crowded, star systems. Do you have what it takes to manipulate the resources at your disposal and control the galaxy?!
How to win
The player with the most points wins the game.
Players score points by gaining knowledge, exploring new worlds, completing missions, and placing structures to gain majority control on each star system.
See the Scoring Side of your Scoring / Icon Player Aid cards for more information.
On Your Turn
Take 2 Actions: You may then take any 2 of the actions listed below. You may take the same action twice.
Explore: Draw and play a world from the bag. Take one knowledge.
Adapt: Activate a Habitat and/or take the top ally from any stack.
Build: Build a collector or colony.
Harvest: Gain 1 resource per collector you have built.
Conspire: Draw two mission cards or 1 Ally & 1 Mission card.
The game ends when a player places their last colony.
Score Victory Points for Controlling star systems, unspent knowledge, and completed Missions
—description from the publisher
Horizons Full Playthrough - JonGetsGames
- Demonstrates a wide variety of actions and ally combinations, showing strategic depth and engine building.
- Multiple pathways to scoring, including hidden objectives and majority control of star systems.
- Prototype version with on-table interaction; notes about final production components add context for potential improvements.
- Mentions a prototype version; final components (e.g., snap-in tokens) are described as changes to the production version.
- Endgame can arrive suddenly once a fifth colony is placed, potentially catching players off guard.
- territory control via planets and alliances with hidden objectives
- spacefaring races expanding to control star systems
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Adapt action — Activate a habitat and/or take an Ally; adaptation influences available actions and ally use.
- Ally and mission cards — Ally cards provide ongoing effects; mission cards grant end-game points and other benefits; only up to five Allies and five Missions may be held.
- Build action — Place colonies or resource collectors on planets; costs and bonuses vary by planet type and presence of opponents.
- Conspire action — Draw mission cards or one Ally and one Mission; may discard to reveal alternatives.
- end game bonuses — The game ends when a player has built all five colonies; then scoring occurs.
- End-game condition — The game ends when a player has built all five colonies; then scoring occurs.
- explore action — Draw and place a planet tile from the bag and/or gain a knowledge point.
- Harvest action — Generate resources: energy per energy-collector and metal per metal-collector you have in play.
- Turn structure — Each player on a turn can take two actions selected from five options and may combine them.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- we're doing a full 3 player playthrough of horizons
- every single action they take in the game is good to be drastically amplified by a variety of different allies that they can pick up as they're playing
- this game is being funded through Kickstarter
- this is a prototype version of the game in the final version there will be a little snap in tokens
- the game ends immediately once one player has built all five of their colonies down on to the planet
- we now have five allies and five missions so we are at our limit on both of those
- on our turn we could take any two actions we can mix or match