Xia: Legends of a Drift System is a 3-5 player sandbox style competitive space adventure. Each player starts as a lowly but hopeful captain of a small starship.
Players fly their ships about the system, completing a variety of missions, exploring new sectors and battling other ships. Navigating hazardous environments, players choose to mine, salvage, or trade valuable cargo. Captains vie with each other for Titles, riches and, most importantly, Fame.
The most adaptive, risk-taking and creative players will excel. One captain will rise above the others, surpassing mortality by becoming Legend!
Customize: Each player begins the game by choosing and customizing a Tier 1 starship. Invest all your money in engines and be a rapid, yet fragile, explorer. Put all your credits into an uber missile and watch other players flee in terror. Get a small engine and save space and credits to invest in buying and selling cargo. Or create a well rounded ship, ready for anything. In Xia, the choice is always yours.
Adapt: The goal of Xia is to become the most famous captain. Completing missions, besting ships in combat, purchasing higher tier ships, selling Cargo Cubes and claiming Titles are all ways that players can earn Fame Points. The best pilots will adapt to their surroundings, making snap judgments and changing plans on-the-fly. If you can think on your feet, you'll do well in Xia!
Sandbox: The real fun of Xia is that each game will be different. There is no set direction of play - players may choose to be peaceful traders, fierce pirates, workers, miners, opportunists, etc. The game board is randomly laid out and explored each time you play. Players might choose not to explore at all, creating a tiny arena for swift and deadly combat, or explore all 19 sectors and have a large play-scape to exploit. It's up to you!
Modding: Xia is very open to modding, and the community has already created loads of stuff. See BGG's Unofficial Xia:LoaDS mods and expansions wiki.
- Open-world sandbox gameplay
- Feels very thematic and chaotic like space
- Massive amount of content
- Many different strategies to win
- Continuously discovering new rules and systems
- Highly replayable
- Engaging solo campaign
- Space exploration and adventure
- Space sandbox universe
- Open sandbox narrative
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Dice rolling — Chaotic chance elements with dice
- Multiple victory paths — Many different ways to achieve goals
- sandbox gameplay — Open world with many ways to win
- Solo Campaign — Can play solo campaign mode
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I play Qwirkle every morning - it's a perfect way to start my day
- The art is just beautiful and I'm really proud to own and show off to people when they come over
- The game is whatever you create it to be
- This game blew my mind
- It feels like you can do anything and because of that I was just blown away
- You can play a hundred different ways and you could probably still win
- This is not gonna get old - we may not play it a ton but when we do play it it's always a blast