Review: Wild Space (Pandasaurus)

This review is a little late. And frankly, I blame Wild Space from Pandasaurus Games.

We played it through and, of course, made some mistakes the first time. Such is life. Even with our mistakes, this game wowed us. So we played it again.

By then it was dinner time, but we were back afterward for two more plays. The feeling then? Even more wowed. We had to quit playing just to get this review out at all.

So let’s dive into the top five reasons Wild Space will leave you utterly wowed, mildly addicted, and definitely wanting more.

Animals (and Robots) in Spaaaace

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At its heart, Wild Space is a set collecting game flavored with an engine building mechanic. Cards in the game feature engaging artwork of six types of animals (bear, monkey, owl, octopus, iguana, and rhino) as well as various robots.

You are managing a spaceship crew that will explore the game’s five planets. You start with one of six animal captains, each with its own mix of special abilities and bonus points.

As you explore planets, you recruit more crew members, either animal or robot. Each crew member has one of six occupations and may also have a special ability. You can also recruit emissaries which give you new ways to score victory points and may have a special ability as well.

Building the Universe

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Your crew needs places to go, so one of your setup tasks involves picking the five planets you’ll use in the game. Lay out the two starting planets face up, then randomly select three “advanced” planets and add them to your tableau face down.

On your first two turns, you can only explore the starting planets. Players unlock the other planets by adding crew members to their ship. Thematically, these planets present more challenges, so you need a bigger crew to deal with them.

Once a planet is unlocked, it’s available to everyone, regardless of how many crew members they have.

Landing and exploring

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Wild Space uses a very clever timing mechanism that limits the number of turns in the game. Each of the five planets has two sectors, giving you 10 potential landing spots.

Players get five spaceships each. The ships can only go to one sector of one planet. They land on their first turn and explore on a second turn. Five ships, each with a landing and exploration step, mean you get 10 turns to grow your crew and score victory points before the game ends.

Running Your Engine

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The engine building aspect of the game plays out in the abilities on the crew cards and the actions available on the planets.

As you play a crew card that has an ability, the ability triggers. If the crew card has a “veteran” medal on it, that unlocks a new ability or victory points on your captain card, too.

Some crew abilities also have conditions you must meet before the ability will work, such as discarding a card or having crew with a certain specialty.

Abilities only trigger once per crew card, but if one card lets you play another, you can chain the abilities and keep going. In one of our test games, Isaac pushed this mechanic to the limit by spending several turns drawing cards and then playing his entire hand in one spectacular round.

Scoring All the Points

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Victory points in Wild Space come from the mix of animals and robots in your crew, the missions on your emissary cards, and your captain’s veteran track.

You start with five points for each set of three matching animals, plus another five points for each additional matching animal in the set. If you had five iguanas in your crew for example, they would earn you 15 points (five for the first three, plus five each for the other two).

Emissaries give you points based on your mix of crew cards and their abilities, such as a bonus for every three pilots, having pairs of bears and engineers, or having the most emissaries. Robots can help you complete emissary goals, but they don’t count as animals for making sets.

Verdict

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Wild Space is one of the best medium-strategy games we’ve seen in a long time. It’s the whole deal, with something for everyone.

The varying captain abilities, randomly available crew cards, and demands of unknown planets mean every game presents unique challenges to the players. Since it only takes about 30 minutes to play, it also has that magical one more game thing to keep players coming back.

Topping it all is the big feature I look for as a future empty-nester: solitaire play. Wild Space delivers that as well with a set of “solo mode” cards. You can even adjust the difficulty level of your solitaire game.

If you enjoy set collecting and engine building, or just love the idea of animals exploring the galaxy, then Wild Space is for you.