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In Solar Storm, you are crew members on board a ship that has had its energy core taken out by solar flares. Even worse, the ship is caught in the sun’s gravitational pull which is causing even more damage. It is only a matter of time before you and the rest of the crew perish.
You and the other crew members must repair the ship whilst using resources to divert what little power is left, back to the energy core. You must work together if you have any hope of survival. Get moving. You have limited resources and more solar flares are continuously causing more damage. Can you survive this Solar Storm, or will you perish in the burning abyss?
On a player’s turn, they may take up to 3 of the following actions; move, use resources to repair an area of the ship, use resources to divert power from an area back to the energy core, scavenge for resources, share resources, or strategically save actions for later in the game.
At the end of each player’s turn, the ship will take more damage. The level of damage will increase as the game goes on. Players win if they can direct power from all areas back to the energy core. However, players will lose if an area takes too much damage or if the resource deck runs dry.
Solar Storm will give players a unique game every time they play due to the ship’s areas being laid out randomly at the start of each game. In Solar Storm, cooperative play is essential as players cannot win on their own.
—description from designer
- Small box with a lot of game
- Good for solo or co-op puzzle solvers
- Simple rules with many ways to solve problems
- Effective room abilities
- Simplistic but functional graphic design
- Compact box
- Can start to feel samey after four or five plays
- May not be a game with a lot of repeat plays
- Deluxe version has different room layouts that could have been in the core box
- fighting a fire on a spaceship
- space
- Pandemic
- Horrified
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — Each player gets three actions and you can take each action multiple times.
- Area Control — If a room is fully repaired you can divert its power by spending the three cards shown here.
- Automata — Your opponent in the game is the game itself.
- card management — Many actions in the game require you to spend cards.
- Dice rolling — You can attempt to scavenge and roll a d6.
- hand management — And any actions you don't use can be saved for later turns.
- Movement — Move allows you to go to an adjacent room but not diagonally.
- Push Your Luck — Damage the ship turn over the top damage card and remove the top repair cube from that room.
- set collection — You can repair a room by spending a matching repair card. Universal cards can repair any section.
- Trading — If you're in the same room you can spend an action to trade cards with another player.
- Variable player powers — You can use a room special ability, shown below, as an action.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- solar storm is a small box game with a lot of game in it
- the rules are simple but there is a lot of ways to go about solving your problem
- solar storm is what i would consider a fire fighting co-op like the games pictured here
- the best thing about this game is how much game comes in this tiny box
- however as much as i enjoyed the core gameplay loop after four or five plays it was starting to feel samey
- solar storm - a little undercooked?