Galactic Cruise

Welcome to the age of space tourism! In Galactic Cruise you all work for a space tourism agency. You compete to become the best tour planner, so that you will become the next CEO of the company.

This is a complex worker placement game in which you have to orchestrate many moving parts to launch space trips for your clients. You have to build spaceships, obtain resources, advertise your tour packages in order to attract clients, and eventually you will launch your spaceships and send your clients to outer space. In the core worker placement mechanism, there are 12 different action types grouped into pairs. You always place your worker on a pair, and you are allowed to perform two different actions. You are not limited to performing those two specific actions in the pair. You can choose to perform actions on other action pairs which are connected to where you have just placed your worker. If they are connected by your own technology tokens, you can use those connected actions for free. Otherwise, you have to pay. You have much flexibility in this worker placement mechanism. 

Another reason why you have more flexibility is that occupied worker placement spots do not block entry. You can remove an opponent’s worker to place your own, it’s just that they will get a small reward. You don’t even have to pay for this. They take the reward from the bank. 

The player board and spaceships

In addition to the various steps required to launch space trips, many of your actions are related to improving your own abilities. For example, increasing your storage capacity for resources, and increasing your number of workers.

Trip itineraries, tour leaders and clients

Galactic Cruise is a heavy Eurogame about coordinating many elements of a project and executing your project efficiently. You have various tools and abilities which you want to utilise well to maximise your actions. 

The premise is interesting. The gameplay does not excite me. It’s a lot of work and the game has lots of stuff. If you like complicated work then there is plenty. Player interaction is mild. You don’t inconvenience your opponents much. You can grab stuff they want, but they will just need to wait a little or they can settle for something just slightly worse. There are small things you want to avoid doing so that you don’t create tactical opportunities for your opponents. For example you try not to deplete a resource completely because when your opponent performs a refill he will gain a bigger benefit.