Solar Storm in about 3 minutes

Kia ora Koutou and welcome to solar storm in about three minutes review copy used it has a solo mode it's a game for one to four players, playing time is short and it's a pretty simple game warning warning solar flare incoming! oh no the energy core has been knocked out of commission and we are drifting in space no wait we're drifting towards that star if we don't get the engine call back online we're going to roast to death we have no time and so much to do!

you all win if you manage to divert all power to the engine core and activate it you all lose if part of the ship takes too much damage or all the resource cards run out card management: many actions in the game require you to spend cards automata: your opponent in the game is the game itself the board consists of nine rooms the engine core is in the middle with the other eight rooms arranged around the outside each room has repair markers, a special ability and what it needs to have its power diverted each player gets three actions and you can take each action multiple times move allows you to go to an adjacent room but not diagonally you can repair a room by spending a matching repair card place a repair cube on the matching spot on the room universal cards can repair any section you can use a room special ability, shown below, as an action if a room is fully repaired you can divert its power by spending the three cards shown here again universal cards count as any type.

place a diverted power marker in the room a room with one of these markers is easier to repair as all cards count as universal to fix it you can attempt to scavenge and roll a d6 on a one to two you get nothing on a three to five one card and six two cards these can either be from the two face-up cards or random draws from the deck if you're in the same room you can spend an action to trade cards with another player and any actions you don't use can be saved for later turns some powers allow you to place protection markers in rooms when all actions are done draw either one card from the face-up options or two from the deck then damage the ship turn over the top damage card and remove the top repair cube from that room damage gets more intense as the game goes on however protection prevents aroom from taking damage it is now the next player's turn why would you like this game?

solar storm is a small box game with a lot of game in it if you are a fan of solo or co-op games that are puzzle solving you might get a kick out of it the rules are simple but there is a lot of ways to go about solving your problem in particular the room abilities and how you use them effectively are a huge boon the graphic design is simplistic, but incredibly functional it won't blow you away artistically but it makes everything very easy to understand solar storm is what i would consider a fire fighting co-op like the games pictured here you have limited time and resources to stop a problem so if you like these games you'll probably like solar storm 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 and while the foundations are strong i'm not sure it's the sort of game that gets a lot of repeat plays the deluxe version has different room layouts that might help that and i feel those could have been in the core box as mentioned earlier solar storm shares a lot in common with the classic pandemic as well as the newer horrified solar storm - a little undercooked?

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