Jump Drive is the easy version of Race for the Galaxy, by the same designer Tom Lehmann. Race for the Galaxy is one of my favourite games. Many people complain about the many icons and how hard they are to learn. I guess they are a little intimidating at first, but once you understand the general principles in the game, they are manageable. You don't really read the icons. You just need to understand the key rules. Then the icons become reminders for what the card powers are. For any more complicated card powers, there is text on the card you can read. To me the icons are functional and practical.
Jump Drive has been around for some time. I've never had any urge to try it, since I'm comfortable with Race for the Galaxy. I don't need a kiddie version. Sorry I sound nasty calling this a kiddie version. It is a different game, and it could have been given a wholly different theme, and be an independent game. It is quicker and more straight-forward than Race for the Galaxy.
Jump Drive is a card game. It is set in the future, when humankind has just invented jump drives which allow interstellar travel. This is a tableau game where you will play cards into your own area. Cards mostly help you draw more cards every turn, or score points every turn. The game ends when someone has 50 points or more. Think of this as a snowball game. As you add more and more cards which score points to your tableau, the points you score every turn snowballs. There is an exciting acceleration which you are trying to achieve, almost like achieving terminal velocity to launch yourself into outer space.
Every turn you may play one or two cards, and if you don't, you do something called explore, which is to draw several cards then discard some, so that you get a net of two more cards. The explore action basically helps you find good cards you can play. When playing a card, you have to pay for it using other cards from your hand. Cards in the game are either worlds (i.e. planets) or developments (i.e. technologies). If you play just one world, you get a rebate of 1 card. If you play just one development, you get a discount of 1 card. However if you want to play one world and one development, there is no rebate or discount. You need to be able to afford them. Some worlds are military worlds. You don't pay for them, however you need to have accumulated enough military strength from existing cards in your tableau.
Cards you manage to play give you various abilities, and the most common two are income and victory points. Income means cards you get to draw every turn. Victory points are generated every turn too. Some cards have other abilities, but there aren't that many different powers in the game. So this is a pretty straight-forward game.
This screenshot from BoardGameArena.com shows the cards we have played every turn. The asterisk icon means no cards were played, i.e. an exploration was done. Usually you try to play at least one card every turn, but sometimes you can't afford one. If you are familiar with Race for the Galaxy, one difference you'll notice is that duplicate cards are allowed. Most if not all of the art is from other games in the Race for the Galaxy universe. I have played so much of Race for the Galaxy that I'd prefer Jump Drive to have a different theme and use different art, because it's a good game in itself despite sharing several similarities. The same art makes me compare it to Race for the Galaxy, and when I do that, Jump Drive feels like, well, a kiddie version. And that's not fair at all.
This Rosetta Stone World is probably the most complex a card can be in Jump Drive. This is a compact and fast card game. You must play efficiently, because otherwise the acceleration will catch you unprepared. You build your tempo to achieve terminal velocity. There is no direct player interaction, but watching your opponents' tempos is important. If they are rushing, you don't want to be left behind, or you need to prepare for a powerful enough boost to be able to overtake them. Players may surpass 50 on the same turn. When that happens, you want to have a more powerful engine so that you score more than everyone else.
