Designer: Damian Korus

Artist: Patryk Rozanski

Publisher: Ply Games

Genre/Mechanisms: area control, deck building, hand management, miniatures, point-to-point movement, take that

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Exploration is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total almost 4.5x the initial funding goal.

Player Count: 1-5

Solo Mode: yes

Complexity: medium-heavy

Risk: high

What It’s About:  A space-themed deck-builder with area control, miniatures, and unique orbital movement mechanics.

How It Works:  Exploration plays over 8 rounds, with two phases in each round: Preparation & Exploration. In the Preparation phase, players purchase and build spaceships, gain development cards, plan maneuvers, and build out their technology tree. In the Exploration phase, players move their spaceships, can increase or decrease orbit, change orbit direction, transfer Modules between spacecraft, execute a Special Module drop, and resolve any Space Collisions. The goal of Exploration is the area control of near-Earth space, combined with completed Space Missions, as well as the accumulation of Credits.

Comparisons:  There are a bunch of space combat and 4x games on the market, from Twilight Imperium to Eclipse to Sandy Peterson’s Hyperspace. Even Gaia Project has some similarities, though Gaia Project is much more of an engine builder. And while Exploration does in fact, include combat, it’s not really a game about combat. It may be even less about combat than Scythe, which reaps most of its gameplay rewards from the threat of combat. Exploration is very much an engine-builder and efficiency puzzle at its core, where the occasional combat is simply a way to slow down your enemies while proceeding with your most efficient actions. It that way, it bears some similarities with Kepler-3042. And it may have many more pieces and miniatures than a simple card game like Space Explorers, but the gameplay originates from a similar method of design. In fact, the best comparison might be Space Explorers 2.0, with a large board, lots of spaceship minis, and several more gameplay mechanics, but with the focus remaining on the efficiency of player actions and engine-building.

What Should I Pledge?:
$25 Collectors Pledge: just the big scale Destroyer miniature, with free shipping.
$69 Core Box: the Exploration Core Box, including solo mode & all unlocked stretch goals.
$114 All-In Pledge: the Core Box pledge, plus the Recover, Super Maneuver, and Conqueror Expansions, and the big scale Destroyer miniature with separate, free shipping.

Add-Ons:
$10 Conqueror Spaceship Pack: includes 4 Conqueror miniatures & 4 Conqueror cards.
$10 Recover Spaceship Pack: includes 4 Recover miniatures & 4 Recover cards.
$10 Super Maneuver Spaceship Pack: includes 4 Super Maneuver miniatures & 4 Super Maneuver cards.

KS Exclusives:
Several of the stretch goal rewards are KS-exclusive, including: 2 new Hazard cards, 12 New Module Tokens, 1 new Solo Mode card, 1 new Solo Mode Hard Level card, 3 new Action Cards, the Venus board expansion, the Balloon Module with 8 new tokens, a new Development Card, a new Primary Mission card, and 2 new Secondary Mission Cards.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S. you’re looking at $114 for the All-In Pledge plus $10 in shipping for a total of $124.

Exploration completes its Kickstarter on Tuesday, July 9th and tentatively ships in May 2020.