Frozen Frontier

Cosmodrome Games, to me, consistently maintains a minimum level of quality—not just in production, but more importantly in gameplay. I assume the bad designs get sent to the gulag. Frozen Frontier is one of those games that drops you into a fresh corner of the galaxy and immediately makes you look at every available opportunity with the gaze of someone determined to grab it before the player next to them does.

At its core, it is an economic resource-management game: players move through new sectors and try to exploit whatever is there before their opponents do. Rounds move quickly and downtime stays low, so the flow never breaks while everyone fights to squeeze value out of their choices.

Where the game starts to bite is in its semi-cooperative side. You need to watch what the others are doing, while the AI modules can, if used cleverly, place genuine tombstones on the balances of area majority. This is not simply a matter of “building my own thing”: interaction can change who controls an area and who is left staring into the galactic void.

I found it very good, fresh, and clever enough to pleasantly melt your brain. The different sectors, companies, leaders, and all the other little bits promise to keep it feeling fresh for a very long time. Its only real flaw is that I missed it during procurement, and now I have to track it down.