Interplanetary: A Giant Hop for Squeakind

An automata-free solo experience about exploring and settling in one's solar system, with an entirely player-driven gameplay system and very few random elements. --- Winner of the "most innovative mechanics" and other awards during BGG's 2021 P&P Solo Contest --- Billions watched the live global broadcast of the first Squeak hopping on the Mun over 50 years ago. Now, the various nations on planet Tree have finally come together as the United Forests and have created a planet-wide space program to peacefully explore their solar system. You have been selected as Head of the Exploratory Branch of that program! Send probes into the void to reach distant moons and comets. Go where no Squeak has gone before and put two adorable little paws on another planet. Design and construct never-before seen spacecraft, purpose-made for your missions in interplanetary space. Peacefully explore the Squeak's solar system and establish research outposts on its many worlds and moons. Maybe, just maybe, make startling discoveries out on the final frontier and herald a new era for all of Squeakind! This solo-game is an entirely player-driven experience, there are no turns and there is no opponent or random events. In 'Interplanetary', you are tackling a "campaign deck" that presents you with a semi-random list of goals you need to achieve, called "directives". After the initial setup, play consists of you picking an action from a (rather long) list, executing that action and then paying its cost by moving a cube along a numbered track. This cube tracks the available amount of actions to fulfill your current directive. Each time the cube reaches the end of its track, the campaign deck gets updated and if you take too long, you might have failed your current directive. When the campaign deck runs out, you tally your score and if that score is better than your previous scores, you can rejoice! In summary, this is a game of heavy action-economy optimization. You are trying to fulfill your goal with the most optimal sequence of actions while trying to improve your overall situation to have a better chance to also tackle the next directive. —description from the designer