SETI

I will play a card and get 2 probe moves. I’ve just landed on Mars then I’ll meet one of the objectives and that will give me data. O! I can use this data to increase my income. I also collected 6 drops needed to analyse the blue alien particle. This will allow me to win the favour of the aliens and I will still get a special card from them. Now it’s time to buy the technology that will allow me to launch the probe straight away. I will spend 1 energy to jump to the asteroid. I’ll just play 2 more cards and that’s it… Wait!!!

After all, I can still send a signal which will give me new data and I will also be able to mark the pink trail of the aliens. I’ll move the probe because I have that tech after all. I’ll make a moon landing and bang 25 points. We’ve got it! Then we can move on to counting up the points. I hope you haven’t waited too long for me to finish these last few moves?

I invite you to a review of SETI. A game where there is always that one brain that knows how to grind resources so that others can watch him play by himself for 15 minutes. Was it me this time?

What is it about?

Each of us is in charge of space exploration agency. Over the course of the game we will launch probes, send out signals, analyse data, invent new technologies and orbit planets or land on them. However, all this leads to one thing. To prove that we are not alone in space and to score as many points as possible in the process. Because SETI is such a euro point salad game with a strong space vibe. It’s the kind of game I tend to avoid. However, for this game I made quite an exception.

Here are a few reasons why

First and foremost is the space vibe. For most it’s probably down to my strange fascination with space, but what I love about SETI is that the gameplay matches the theme of the game. All of the technology and actions in the game are used in real life, and I think that ramps up the atmosphere of the game even more for me. I’m just more likely to play euro games if I’m feeling the vibe.

Multi-Use Cards. I love how cards in games can be used in several ways. In SETI a card can be played as an action which will give me an immediate effect, provide a score at the end of the game or offer some quest to complete. Additionally, they can be discarded as a free action to gain various bonuses, the card can also be used to increase income or sometimes discarded to send an extra signal. There are a lot of possibilities and that’s what gets me going. Most importantly, everything is laid out as clearly as possible.

Another big plus of SETI is that all the actions interlock so well. I know exactly what to do to get these various bonuses and meet the requirements for discovering new space races. My introduction describes it all exactly. You can also do some pretty good action combos in SETI and it’s just incredibly satisfying.

I also really like the fact that we are constantly running out of resources and have to fight to manage them well. Although in order to operate it all well and know how to save you have to play this game a minimum of 2 times, but we’ll come back to that.

There are 5 alien civilisations available in the game. Each race has its own separate rules and provides new cards to play with. We have bugs that require transport, an asteroid that spins in space, various anomalies and even a kind of push your luck with the danger. It’s diverse and I like that each alien civilisation has its own mechanics to add variety to our game. In the game we will always be accompanied by 2 random alien races so we never know who we will discover.

I thought rotating planets would be such a fiddly feature. However, it’s an important integral part of the game. Because during gameplay it matters where a planet is positioned and where our probe is. If a player triggers a space rotation then they can also move our probe and move it to a more convenient position for us e.g. avoid asteroids that slow us down. It’s just great and I love this kind of thing in games.

A few reasons not to leave the kallax atmosphere

You may remember me mentioning that the cards are awesome. Some of them are more awesomer. Some of the cards are so strong that you look at them with surprise at how much you can do with them. Draw of them is a bit random so there have been times when someone gets a so-called divine hand.

SETI can be a bit long. Sometimes when I play I wish the game would end one round sooner. A 4-player game takes about 4 hours. Even with two of us it took us at least 2 hours. There can also be a fair amount of downtime given the situation I described at the beginning. If you know the game then you know how much you can squeeze out of it and squeeze those punts out until the very end. Do you have the time to wait like that?

The game also scales a bit strangely. E.g. on 2 players, sending a signal isn’t that profitable because it’s harder to fill the fields needed to gain an advantage. There is also no mechanism to help with this. On the other hand, with 4 players, there is no such problem. On 2 and 3 players we also get a boost to discover aliens faster. Which is a plus. Because with 4 players it can take a while.

The components of the game are as spacey as possible given the theme of the game and the Re-Wood technology that Czech Games Edition uses. However, we need to stock up on string bags and some patience when SETI up the game. Because I kind of miss the insert for this game.

Summary

What I love about SETI is the whole journey we have to take to discover alien civilisations. I love the planetary rotations, optimising my moves, the cards played in several ways, the tight resource management and the great interlocking mechanics. However, the most important thing for me is the atmosphere of this game. It’s simply cosmic and matches all the actions I do in the game.

Although I have to dose myself a bit with this game and it’s not because of the long gameplay time. It’s just that it’s the kind of game where I have to focus on my movements and there’s no time for chatter and some banter. The brain sometimes evaporates so much because one is trying to squeeze as many points as possible here and prolong this grinding with tight resources.

Final verdict: Sensational Euro To Intergalactic awesomeness

Pros

• Space atmosphere
• Cards playable in several ways
• Great mechanics to match the game
• Combat with tight resources
• Replayable aliens
• Space rotation fun

Cons

• Can be lengthy
• No insert
• Some cards are more superb

[Game provided by Czech Games Edition]