You can get me into a board game pretty easily if it has a strong presentation and high-quality components, and that’s the first thing that you’ll notice when you check out Crafting the Cosmos, the newest from Office Dog Games. Manipulating the universe to your advantage, you’ll move planets, gather resources, spawn Advanced Life and, as per what it says on the box, craft your own cosmic creation. While it doesn’t feature a lot of players interacting with one another, its slick appearance and easy setup go a long way in making it a captivating experience nonetheless.
What I love about Crafting the Cosmos is that the shared main board element is built into a custom organiser tray in a really clever way. Large marbles, representing energy, are placed in the centre, and must be moved around strategically to gather resources. Everything has its place; the various elements and tokens surround it, preventing the need to have it all piled up messily on the table itself. It mostly makes setting up the game incredibly easy, and it’s quite satisfying visually.
Production extends to the player boards; divets everywhere mean elements pop into place, and even the circular spaces for cardboard discs have a slight indent at the bottom, so that you can push down and grab them out without risk of accidentally knocking around other pieces in your play area. It’s all incredibly smart, tactile game design, and other tabletop manufacturers should take notes; these little touches make a serious difference.
“…there’s a lot of tactical depth needed to maximise your cosmic creation…”
Onto the gameplay itself, though, and Crafting the Cosmos thrives as a resource-gathering adventure. The marbles in the centre can be moved up to three times on your turn, but you must move the one marble of your colour as part of that sequence. Then, you’ll gather resources where all the marbles end up – even your opponents’ marbles. That’ll net you Stars of different types, Life tokens, and Power Cards, plus every turn will allow you to add a Nebula tile to your player board. Surrounding that tile with the stars that you need will allow you to flip it, earning victory points, and bonuses can be gained from surrounding it in Advanced Life tokens, too.
In that sense, Crafting the Cosmos is very puzzle-like in nature. You’ll need to think about what resources you can collect each turn, consider the Nebulas on your player board, and plot out the path of the Stars that you surround them with (Stars must be connected, and can’t be placed willy-nilly). It’s tactically gratifying to consider your options; some Nebulas require fewer resources to activate, but they’re not worth as many points, of course. You can move Stars around the board once placed, but only swapping positions, within the placement rules. Flipping Life tokens so that they become Advanced Life can earn you bonus points, but that uses up part of your turn, so you can’t do it repeatedly. That said, when you unlock a Power Card, it gives you ongoing benefits to trigger, which can help turn the tide.
There’s a lot to consider, and it will take you a game or two to properly get your head around the mechanics and form your strategy. While the game works incredibly well in that sense, with important decisions popping up constantly, it lacks interaction between players. Moving the marbles can impact another player, but only marginally; you can block their coloured marble to make their life difficult, but it’s likely sacrificing your own strategy to do so. There are also universal goal cards, which compare, for example, the number of specific star types in front of you. Even so, most of our game was spent quietly pondering our next move, rarely glancing over at each other’s play area or making any competitive decisions.
That certainly doesn’t make Crafting the Cosmos a lesser experience; our whole group agreed that we had an enjoyable time, with strategies forming as we progressed, that will surely inform future plays. It reminds me of games like Wingspan, in that sense; while there is a shared pool of resources, you’re mostly worried about what’s happening directly in front of you, with low interaction with one another. Still, considering the rules are relatively simple, there’s a lot of tactical depth needed to maximise your cosmic creation, and get the absolute best score at the end, which makes it more than compelling enough to come back to.
When you consider the incredibly high production quality, I can forgive that it might not force you to mess with your opponents as much as other tabletop experiences. It makes for a cosy sort of vibe as you flesh out your little solar system, and more experienced groups can speed the pace up a little by starting the next player’s turn while the previous is figuring out placing Stars and Nebulas. Tickling the brain in all the right ways with a stellar theme, Crafting the Cosmos is a worthy addition to any tabletop collection.
Crafting the Cosmos is available now in all good board game stores. Thanks to VR Distribution for providing a copy for this review.
About the Author
Luke Mitchell
he/him
Luke spends his time making radio, playing video games, binge-watching TV, getting unreasonably invested in wrestling, hosting bear events and hanging out with his beautiful pets.
