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Project EOS Rise is a one- to four-player cooperative space adventure game that mashes up Worker Placement, Push Your Luck, and Dice Placement game mechanics. You and your crew will travel the universe, hunting down Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) that will advance your progress towards finding the Paradise Planet. Once the Paradise Planet is located, the crew will put everything on the line in a desperate attempt to reach it and win the game.
Project EOS Rise features a “Roll For Location” game system that ensures each playthrough generates a unique universe with unique challenges. As well, a light RPG system allows the crew to explore and discover multiple paths to victory.
Whatever path you take, the four characters - Pilot, Combat Specialist, Engineer & Medical Director - can advance their skills strategically to best benefit your mission. Do you spend credits to expand the EOS and open new actions like mining, scanning, or crafting? Do you become a smuggler and deliver interesting cargo to distant galaxies to gain intel and advance your progress? Do you attack Alien ships using the combined strength and skills of the crew?
Whatever path you choose "Time is of the essence" because each year exploring brings the star marker on the Extinction track one step close to game over. Also keeping the Starship EOS in working condition is paramount because, if the Command room is destroyed, your mission is aborted. In either case, the game is lost.
Step into the command chair and pilot humanity's first intergalactic starship!
—description from the designer
Project EOS Rise SNEAK PEEK
- Strong cooperative framework with escalating difficulty
- Rich theme and table presence
- Modular, replayable with many possible strategies
- Innovative facilitator mechanic to curb alpha players
- Character roles and skill trees add depth
- Streamlined combat with tactical choices
- Steep learning curve; rule book can be intimidating
- Heavy game that may not suit all players; not easy to win
- Table space requirements; large components and boards
- Alpha player problem remains; requires careful management
- Cooperative spacefaring mission under a countdown extinction threat
- Space exploration to locate the Paradise Planet and save humanity
- Sandbox with emergent storytelling; facilitator-guided to balance group dynamics
- Pandemic
- Burgle Bros
- Forbidden Island
- Forbidden Desert
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Combat system with dice — Dice are rolled to resolve combat; shields and dice upgrades influence outcomes.
- Combat: Dice — Dice are rolled to resolve combat; shields and dice upgrades influence outcomes.
- Contracts — Contracts grant bonuses and guide progress along funding/intelligence tracks.
- Contracts, missions, and side quests — Contracts grant bonuses and guide progress along funding/intelligence tracks.
- Cooperative Game — Players work together to achieve the objective rather than competing against each other.
- cooperative play — Players work together to achieve the objective rather than competing against each other.
- Deck management and modular rooms — Rooms and advanced rooms provide new powers; player ability decks and ship-type decks add variety.
- Endgame extinction track — A countdown that advances each round, driving urgency and potential game over.
- Facilitator role — One player acts as game facilitator to keep play moving and balance participation.
- Modular Board — A modular, randomly arranged board increases replayability.
- Randomized alien decks and movement — Alien ships have their own decks, determining how they move and attack.
- Randomized galaxy board — A modular, randomly arranged board increases replayability.
- Resource Management — Players manage credits, hull, and ship upgrades via rooms and technologies.
- resource management and upgrading — Players manage credits, hull, and ship upgrades via rooms and technologies.
- Role-specific abilities and skill trees — Each character has unique powers and a progressive skill tree to unlock improvements.
- Worker Placement — Players assign workers to ship rooms to perform actions (repair hull, charge shields, train, upgrade, etc.).
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- This is a heavy strategy game that has a lot of executive functioning behaviors involved.
- The game facilitator role keeps things moving and fun, like a game master.
- It's a real evolution of the pandemic style of gameplay.
- It is a sandbox game with lots of choices and decisions.
- I'm looking at this board and I want to puzzle it out and improve the pilot.
References (from this video)
- Intensely unique combination of mechanics
- Really good gameplay
- Should have had more buzz
- Clever design
- Crisis Management
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- crisis management — Players deal with ongoing crises within the game.
- Dice Rolling — Dice are used for combat and other actions.
- RPG Leveling — Features character progression similar to role-playing games.
- Worker Placement — A significant component of the gameplay involves placing workers.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- if you took Sudoku and made it a board game with a little bit of adventure in it.
- This is an intensely clever game.
- It's super clever.
- Small game, quick filler, It's right up there with Mouse, Cheesecat, Cucumber for me.
- This is a bidding game where each of your different skyscrapers on this flying island has a different number on the bottom
- And the thing with this game is it's easy to teach. It's quick to play. And it is beautiful. Just beautiful.
- But it is exceptional.
- this is a crisis management game that has a little bit of RPG leveling up, a whole bunch of worker placement, and as I said, crisis management, and you're chucking some dice to do some fighting and all those kinds of things.
- This is to me my handsdown favorite deck builder out there. Period. I adore it.
- It's a dice placement game and I I loved it.
- It's just super asymmetric, which has that moment of, you know, some people don't know what you're doing, so maybe they don't know if you're cheating or breaking the rules or whatever it is.
- This is based on Dante's Inferno. The game's called Inferno, which is a very cool theme to me.
- And just it's a heavy game.
- In fact, I think this is the absolute top limit of how heavy a Euro game can be and I still would be interested in playing it regularly.