Alien Artifacts Card Game First Impressions

Alien Artifacts is a card drafting, tableau-building game.

This is a brief video overview.

Alien Artifacts is a 4X-style card game in which you play as an interplanetary faction, sending your research vessels into uncharted space to expand your knowledge and power. Build powerful ships, develop new technologies, and explore distant planets for anything — or anyone — you can exploit.

Alien Artifacts Review

This is a brief overview of the game along with my positives and negatives.

Update July 2018

So there are a few good things to like about this game. First up is the art. Each card is great. The bright colours on the white backgrounds make the art pop and it really looks good on the table.

The insert is pretty good too. A place for everything and everything fits, and stays, in its place. Always a nice surprise when you have a nice inset, you put the game in a bag on its side open it up and it’s as you left it. Take note Days of Wonder! Yamatai can learn from this!

Even the rulebook is pretty good despite it being from Portal Games. 🙂 I’m not usually a fan of their rulesbooks.

The gameplay is interesting with the way the resources work. It’s good satisfying to see the card in development on the left move over to the right and be completed. This does show your Empire growing.

Each Faction has an ability which makes each race unique, I like that.

There are multiple paths to victory which can be exploited by your race and the card you get. I like that too.

I also liked the mechanisms. The game plays very well.

So why didn’t I like the game?

It just doesn’t do it for me. I’d rather play 7 Wonders or something that’s a more traditional euro. I’m not sure I have anything with similar mechanisms… I’d probably go with Roll for the Galaxy which is more interesting. It also has tableau-building and is set in space so I’m counting it 🙂

Plenty of other better options are around I’m sure.

Jesta ThaRogue