Sanity Test for Star Travelers

Follows the expected structure. The summary of phases and icons on the back page is helpful.

Requirements are listed and match the shop listing.

The introduction is long, but takes full advantage of the setting. The mission of the game makes sense in the context of the setting.

Objective and theme are clearly stated.

Components are listed, along with useful reminders of information the players are likely to depict.

All components are depicted, with key features highlighted.

Clear, step-by-step instructions, but watch out for term inconsistencies and layout issues:

1. "Give each player a starter map and a rocket." The rockets are referred to as "player tokens" in the component list. They should be "player tokens" here or "rockets" there.

2. The last instruction on page 5 ran just a little longer than the space available: ("These should be kept secret until the end of the --" )

Setup is depicted. The key numbers in the setup text and graphic are especially helpful.

The two-phase structure of play is explained well.

Be careful to keep subjects and objects consistent within the rules phrases and sentences. For instance, on page 7, "you cannot end your turn on the same space it began" probably needs an additional phrase making it clear that you're talking about the player's ship. ("You cannot end your turn with your rocket on the same tile where it was at the beginning of the turn.")

You may also be able to compress some phrases to improve readability and clarity. For instance, "Actions completed on Earth" could be referred to as "Earth Actions".

The action explanations are good but need more polish and precision. There's a lot going on in each action, so you need to make sure the terminology is consistent and that the players see the most important information first.

Be careful about introducing irrelevant or distracting information when explaining a rule. For instance, "Scout for Crew" refers to to being about to change the crew member that is face up "without having to recruit them". This is meaningless at this point in the rules, because players reading through the rules will not know what recruiting is yet. It doesn't seem like there is any reason to bring up the difference from recruitment here; you can just specify that scouting is about changing a face-up crew members.

Similarly, "Recruit Crew" starts by specifying the existence of a crew limit. This is useful information, but it's supplemental to the action itself. Start by explaining the most important part of the action ("To recruit a new crew member, take the either the face up crew member..." etc.) and then specify limitations or modifiers in separate paragraphs after you have explained the key idea.

The use verbs of "take" and "draw" should also be consistent. Most people understand that you draw from a deck, but in "Recruit Crew" you are instructed to "take" the face-up card. Is this also a draw? Can you take the face-up card if you already have a crew member of the same title (switching it with the old card), or can you not take that card at all? Most of this question is avoided if you use the verb "draw" throughout the rule.

When doing upgrades (or crew recruitment for that matter), do you replace the face-up card *after* you shuffle the old part into the deck? That's what is implied, but it could be more specific.

"Upgrade Ship" says that only sectors with an outlined square may be upgraded. It would be good to have a visual example here; it doesn't look like this applies to any of the ship parts depicted.

"Reveal a Space" describes the action, then explains that the action "counts as only two actions". You're burying the lede here -- the fact that this costs two actions is the most important part. This is the rare case where you should lead with the limitation, since it is an exception to the overall action structure. Try something like, "Reveal a Space costs two actions. When you take this action, you draw a tile, move to it, and complete the action dictated by that tile."

A quick wording nitpick while revealing spaces: you have "fewer" tiles (countable items) in a pile. You would have "less" ice cream (a measurable quantity) if the game involved scooping out ice cream, which is impractical but might be delicious. But I digress.

Instead of connecting two related but non-sequential instructions with "and", separate the instructions into two sentences. ("Move your rocket to the tile you just placed. You must take the appropriate action..." etc.)

You probably don't need the "Immediately" after each tile, since you are taking the action based on the previous sequence. If you want to stress the immediately, put it in the previous instruction. (For example, "You must immediately take the action associated with this tile".)

The "Space Tile" instruction looks longer and more cumbersome than it is. You might want to set off the example with italics on the "Example:" or giving it its own graphic box.

Space Typo Patrol: In the "Move" action, occupied has two c's.

The "Move" action is confusing. It sounds like 1 Move action moves you 1 space -- if so, this should be made more explicit by replacing the "any" in "any space adjacent". However, it's unclear how you "complete" a Move action that moves you into an occupied space, given the "cannot complete actions" rule. You might be able to sidestep this by telling the players that they "cannot complete non-Move actions" or end their turn in an occupied space.

However, you also have some edge cases that interact with the "must end your turn on a different tile" rule. In theory, I could park myself at a space station, take a couple of actions like searching for parts or recruiting crew that change the information state of the game, and then (with 1 action left) notice that all my adjacent spaces are occupied. How should this be handled?

The "Warp" action. It sounds like moving to the Warp tile is a separate action. The rule makes sense as-is, and accounts for the fact that you might arrive at the Warp at the end of a turn and not be able to use it until your next turn. However, you might want to make the idea that activating the Warp is separate from moving to the Warp a little more explicit, especially since in many cases players will move-and-activate as part of the Reveal a Space action.

Game play pictures depict the relevant components, but some step-by-step examples of the more complex actions (legal and illegal moves, adding up stats for an alien fight, etc) would be useful.

"When the player to the right of the first player finishes their turn" is an awkward way to introduce the concept for an end-of-round victory point check. Try specifying a sequence of events. "The round ends when all players have taken their turns. Check to see if end game conditions have been met..." etc.

For the second condition, you should probably rephrase as "At least one player has written a report on each of the planets that has been revealed." Otherwise, a literal reading would prevent the game from ever ending if two or more players had written a report on one of the planets.

Turning to the solo game for a moment, try to avoid unnecessary conditionals. Instead of telling the player, "If you have not revealed all 9 aliens...", which forces them to think about the condition and whether they meet it, just tell them "You do not have to reveal all 9 aliens, you only have to defeat the ones you have disovered." Simple, declarative statements like this improve player confidence and reduce cognitive load.

Return of the Space Typo Patrol: the first paragraph of the solo game refers to a "mision" card.

Some procedures require extra thought, but I am reasonably confident my group would play correctly (and have fun!).

I'd give this a 2 or even a 2.5 if that were an option. In general, this is a very solid set of rules. As I mentioned in gameplay, though, what this really needs is a "polish pass" that tightens up the phrasing and makes sure the terminology is absolutely consistent throughout. That would take the game from "pretty clear" to "crystal clear".

The section headers, the way the game components are presented in the rules, and the overall layout are all good.

However, the layout is also a little crowded. There's not much spacing between paragraphs, and the small indents don't help my eye move from paragraph to paragraph quickly. This is just a little harder to read and understand than it should be.

Editing down the text should help here. If you can get 5 to 10% back on each page, then turn that over to white space that separates the paragraphs and sections a little better, the readability will jump upwards.

The art and the tagline (collect/travel/fight) do most of the work here. As a gamer who likes "roam through space and cause trouble" games, I'm intrigued.

The bullet points are not doing a lot for you, though. They're very generic, and the first two both play up the same thing (variety) in slightly different ways. Consider turning that into one point and being a little more specific about what mechanics are being mixed. The second point should highlight something that makes the game unique in its genre.

Excellent image, one of the strongest sales points for the game.

The logo fits in well with the backdrop.

The close-ups of components in the back half of the slide show look really good. They show off the richness of color and make the bits look nice. The "all the bits unpacked" third shot is also solid, and would make a good lead-off image.

I recommend deleting the other images, especially the poorly cropped image of the back of the box that leads off the slide show. Those do not flatter the game at all.

The graphic introduction to the game at the bottom is excellent. This does a great job of selling the game, and I think your best move is to shorten the text description as much as you can so you can bring the graphical introduction "above the fold".

After the tagline, the description text does not increase my excitement about the game. I don't know or care about the "World Space Exploration Asociation’s Explorers" (watch out for the typo, by the way), and I've never heard of the book series. Given that the author is not a well-known figure in science fiction, the text will be more effective if it focuses more on why the gameplay is fun than on the game or the author's universe.

I would not emphasize the "millions of combinations" or even the replayability. Most games are lucky to hit the table twice in a lot of today's game groups (especially since we're all playing live-action Pandemic, which puts a crimp in get-togethers) , so the claim that this will "be a feature at your game nights for years to come" is a bit of an eyebrow-raiser.

"Train your crew of Star Travelers as you explore the galaxy, discover new planets, and defeat the alien threat to Earth. " would be a pretty solid lead-off, from which you can segue into the second paragraph that summarizes how to play. After that, I'd hand off to the graphic explanation and let that do the work.

The video brings out the setting well. It's witty and looks a lot higher-budget than it probably is. (It also goes a little too deep into the game details -- we don't need to know *exactly* how a round ends, for instance -- but that's okay.)

I would move the video below the graphic explanation, simply because people are likely make the additional commitment to watching the video once they've gotten a positive impression. Think of each step (short text -> graphic explanation -> video) as stepping up the potential customer's investment in the game, hopefully to the point of hitting the buy button.