Ever wanted to create your own galaxy? Seed life on strange new worlds? Maybe get some of your ya-yas out by blowing up a stars? In Crafting The Cosmos, a hefty new game from Office Dog and Asmodee, you can absolutely do that and…more. I got to try on divinity with a review copy and let me tell you it’s not everything it’s cracked up to be. There’s also a lot more cardboard than I expected…
What’s In The Box?
- 78 gorgeous two-tone plastic stars with UV printing
- 50 double-sided plastic life tokens
- 32 unique power cards
- 1 custom organizer tray
- 8 energy marbles
- 4 dual-layer player boards
- 16 universal goal cards
- 60 energy cards
- 54 unique nebula tiles
- 15 time crystal tokens
- 12 power domes
- 24 advanced life tokens
In a big contrast from the last Office Dog title I reviewed, Crafting The Kosmos is a rather hefty boy. There aren’t a crazy amount of moving parts here but what they do have is distinctive and well-organized. There’s a big plastic insert that helps keep all the little tokens organized but it sits on TOP of the two main boards. This is fairly common in super dense game like Frosthaven but it’s nice to see it showing up elsewhere. When you don’t need the boards to keep it all together you can keep them stashed. The coolest part is the energy board that sits in the middle which has grooves to let you physically move the tokens around without them getting out of place.
When it comes to looks Crafting The Cosmos runs quite heavily on vibes. Against the dark blues and purples of space are neon colored bursts of every color you can imagine to help illustrate everything. Quillsilver is a great studio and they clearly put a lot of attention into nailing the look. It has that sort of warm, timeless vibe you often see more in games that use magic and fantasy — almost as if the game is celebrating the magic of the cosmos.
How’s It Play?
In Crafting The Cosmos, players are working at the highest cosmic level to create the universe. Everything from stars to nebula to the basic building blocks of life are at your disposal and victory is predicated not on who can create the MOST, but who can create the best.
Crafting The Cosmos takes a very basic gameplay loop (gain resource and spend resource) and make it interesting with the mix of a few mechanics. The primary one is the central energy board, which is the only real “shared” element involved. This board is divided into four sections: Light, Gravity, Time, and Chemistry. Controlling each of these sections by having the most tokens on the space gives you benefits including, most importantly, that energy you need to craft. But when you move tokens you have to give up space and possibly lose control. You could spread around or you could try to dominate one energy (for a little while) and it all depends on what your goals are.
From there, you work to, well, craft your cosmos. This is when stars are created, which can age into nebulae. When you complete nebulae with the right elements you get some bonus points. You can manipulate time with time crystals, which gain you stars as you jump through the formation process. Or you can create life, starting with proto-life and progressing to DNA and finally Advanced Life (represented by a tardigrade). These all overlap (need the right nebulae to create life, need the right stars for those nebulae), but it’s not one path towards victory. You could very easily just load up on stars if you wanted, but you have to keep track of your energy. Leftover resources disappear, so you also can use them on your slider to stabilize life, move your cosmos around, or even make a star go SUPERNOVA.
Winner at the end of game comes from counting up your victory points. Most come from the aforementioned three big actions, but you’ll also have Universal Goals each game that help shift how you play and can net you big points if you win. This can be everything from Most Life to Largest Group of Stars to whoever made the most explosions. Essentially it’s the same system CATAN uses but on a cosmic scale.
The Verdict?
I’m a big fan of Crafting The Cosmos for what it is. It’s got some solid gameplay and a really satisfying progression that makes the choices you make each game feel like they matter. I especially love how its laid out, the way everything slots into the boards and how spatial (heh) placement remains important as the game goes on. I think the only real issue I’d have with it is that the themeing is a little…vague? It’s zoomed out to a level where there’s no real identity beyond colors and concepts that sound a little generically “cosmic.” I’d have liked maybe a stronger scientific vibe (similar to SETI) or maybe even something a little sillier that plays up the scale of things and the fact that blowing up a star is a basic gameplay mechanic. But it’s incredibly well made and has a ton of replay value, which is something many games with impeccable themes cannot easily say. If you like space or smart resource management, this is absolutely worth a look.
You can grab Crafting The Cosmos from Amazon or the Asmodee shop, at an MSRP of $79.99.
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Images and review copy via Office Dog Games
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