Star Scrappers: Cave-in

At my first encounter we did not play it, because it did not seem to make much sense as a two-player game. Still, reading through it, I found an idea that caught my attention: instead of the Among the Stars-like element found in Orbital, this uses action-queue manipulation, in a way that reminded me of Faiyum. As a design, it looked clever and fresh — a shame that the table had something else to say later.

The core is built around cards and set collection. Players try to assemble the right combinations, while managing the action queue is the main departure from the related Orbital-style formula I had in mind.

I cannot confidently speak to every detail of the flow or to how lively player interaction becomes, especially since my first look was only through reading and the game did not seem particularly worthwhile at two players. My initial impression, though, was that it needs three or more players to have much reason to exist on the table.

When it was finally played, that clever outline never turned into a complete game. The card and set-collection idea is not bad, and it genuinely has a little freshness to it, but the final result leaves a strong aftertaste of carelessness and half-finished development. It feels like a museum piece from crowdfunding’s worse era: a product that may only have seen daylight because it was bundled on Kickstarter with Fryx’s Star Scrappers: Orbital, and which would probably have gone entirely unnoticed on its own. For about ten euros at an auction, let us say it is tolerable. Under any other circumstances: stay away.

Updated session

The later play did not confirm my initial optimism; it overturned it. The action-queue concept remained interesting on paper, but in practice it was not enough to cover up the feeling of a game that reached market before it was actually finished.