At Essen we had the guys from the Dice Settlers play a game or two with us and they wrote a review in their report about Essen Spiel 2015. So, here it is:
“We had the chance to try out several games but the one that surprised me the most was Small Star Empires by Milan Tasevski. In this space game you are trying to colonize different planets. In a nutshell this is done by moving your ships on a hexagonal grid made up of several different dual sided pieces that can be created any way you want. You can even create two separate boards that can be traversed by use of a wormhole. A turn is actually quite simple. You use one of your starships and travel in a straight line until you want to stop. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that you cannot pass the other players pieces. When you stop you must either place a colony which gives you points for the planet or a station which gives you points for every surrounding enemy piece in addition to the planet. You can also gain bonus points for controlling nebula’s or the most connected pieces. You can even spice things up by using hidden hexes that flip when you land on them for a sweet surprise. We played this in a prototype form in advance of a kickstarter release somewhere next year but I can’t wait for it because in my opinion this was a great game and for us easily the most fun experience of the fair. The game plays really easy and yet has a lot of depth and strategic decisions to be made.”
Thanks for the review guys you rock! Hope we get the chance to play again in the future! 🙂