Stars of Akarios is a narrative-driven, cooperative campaign game set in the Akarios Galaxy. Throughout Stars of Akarios, you will fight in epic space battles, upgrade your ship, and explore the fringes of space. Stars of Akarios is built upon 4 core pillars of game play: Space Combat, World Exploration, Space Exploration, and Player Progression. Each pillar works together to create a unified and epic, sci-fi board game experience.
You and your fellow cadets are close to completing your Akarios Institute pilot training when an unknown enemy attacks your home planet of Medellia. You must fight back with the war hero Captain Soma and her ship, the Sparrow. You will need to step out of your fighters to explore hostile worlds and ships, putting your cunning to the test as you seek new home for your civilization. Use your pilots' skills to complete the challenges you encounter in the limited time available. Manage your ship’s resources as you explore new regions of space and embark on missions fighting to survive through the unknown. Even if you are out of resources you can continue exploring, but you risk starting your next encounter at a disadvantage. Your pilot's skills will grow as you test your grit against the enemies in Stars of Akarios. Upgrade you characters' unique abilities and skill trees, allowing you to customize your play experience.
The 200 page scenario book unfolds as a "choose-your-own-adventure." Each choice, success, and failure will shape your story. It will take multiple play-throughs to see all of the Akarios galaxy. 8 different pilots each come with their own unique progression pad and set of skills. The campaign starts with 4 available pilots and the others are unlocked through the choices you make. 10 pilot ships each come with their own set of abilities and class. The ship class will determine what type of upgrades the ship can equip. Equip a combination of upgrade and ability cards from over 55 weapon cards, 55 engine cards, 55 tech cards, many co-pilots, ship abilities, and pilot abilities. Slot in each upgrade in your dual-layered playerboard where everything has a home.
—description from the publisher
- Massive amount of content and components
- Distinct ships and characters with unique abilities
- Campaign-driven, playable solo or cooperatively
- Strong hobby aspects like painting and display-worthy miniatures
- App and community features that augment play and engagement
- Extensive upgrade and modifier options for deeper customization
- High complexity and potential time investment to master
- Large number of components and tokens could be daunting to store
- Potential sleeve/organizational fit issues for cards
- Spoiler risk in unboxing and preview content
- exploration, crewed spacecraft, cosmic adventure
- Space opera setting with a solo/co-op campaign spanning space battles, planetary exploration, and ship-to-ship combat across a modular universe
- campaign-driven, evolving storyline with persistent progression
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Campaign progression — Persistent decisions influence future sessions and outcomes
- Card-based planetary exploration — Planet exploration uses a dedicated card system in addition to other components
- Deck-based progression — Modifier decks and upgrade cards customize ships and pilots over the campaign
- dice placement — Dice results drive actions, with modifiers influencing outcomes
- Hex-based space combat — Combat on a hex grid with ships, maneuvers, and combat tokens
- Resource and status tracking — Tokens and pads track hull, shields, stress, and other ship statuses
- Trauma deck — Trauma cards introduce penalties when stressed or defeated
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this is packed above the lid with content it is absolutely out of control it's super cool
- Stars of aquarios i think is going to be a complete winner
- i am super pumped to be able to get this game to the table as fast as i can
- look at these ships these are fantastic