Lunarchitects (2016)

Overview

You and your fellow players are architects at Luna Mare, the architectural firm planning the first base on the moon. You will compete with your coworkers for access to building blueprints, astronauts, and construction resources- all to develop the most successful moonbase!

Lunarchitects is a medium-weight strategy game that has players moving their pawns forward in a refilling circular queue to claim building blueprints. Players use the claimed blueprints to build personal moonbase plans in front of them. But instead of turns proceeding clockwise, the player furthest behind in the queue always takes the next turn. This makes blueprint choices a matter of quality over quantity.

Blueprints from four stages are shuffled then stacked, with stages increasing in both cost and power. Each time all players complete a lap of the blueprint queue, scoring occurs- and the game ends after the fourth round of scoring. The player who has collected the most points is the winner, and their plans will guide the creation the first settlement on the moon!

Unknown tile arrangement and variable scoring schemes (determined before the start) makes the game very replayable, as there is never a single most-powerful strategy.

Inspired by the well-loved game Glen More, Lunarchitects is a family game for 1-5 players that plays in about an hour.