Every now and then, a very odd or unique game catches my eye. I knew nothing about Cosmogenesis when I bought it. It looked like a borderline "edu-tainment" product, with its theme about the creation of solar systems and origins of life. And I had success with previous edu-tainment games. Photosynthesis was a surprise smash hit, and turned out to be one of the most popular games in my collection. So maybe Cosmogenesis would capture that same lightning-in-a-bottle?
But solo designer Yves Touringny and publisher Ludonova are not Blue Orange Games. Cosmogenesis plays solidly enough, but it just lacks the sheer "table presence" of something like Photosynthesis.
Star child
Cosmogenesis plays like a tableau-building card game, but without any cards. Instead, each player has a cardboard player board with circular slots along one side, in which circular cardboard planet discs can be slotted. Other cardboard asteroids, comets, and planets can be placed on the board, on the same row as a slotted planet, to act as moons. And small, gray plastic discs (that looks like an Advil tablet) are used to track the development of life on a track on eligible planets (or moons).
The only player interaction is resource-denial, which is rare.
Each player is kind of playing your own little game with almost no interaction with the other players. This can be good for players who can be more sensitive to being "attacked" by other players, or for players who prefer to focus on what they are doing instead of having to try to consider how other players might interfere with their strategy. The only player-interaction that ever really happens would be resource-denial, in cases in which one player specifically claims a token or objective that another player wanted.
But even that seems rare. The way that the game is structured, players are always acquiring new objectives every game round. You always have your own objectives to accomplish, even late in the game. So most players are going to be claiming tokens that actually accomplish their own objectives or improve their own score, rather than wasting a valuable turn by claiming a token specifically to keep it away from another player. If you do claim a token that another player wanted, it's likely because it's also something that benefits you.
This high focus comes from the fact that every game round the players acquire new short-to-medium-term goals to work towards. Even in the last round of the game, you will still be acquiring a new objective (whether you'll be able to accomplish it or not). These goals always feel viable to attain. I've never seen a situation in which its outright impossible for a given player to compete for at least one of the goals that's available, if they work to try to achieve it. I'm sure it's possible, but I haven't seen it happen yet.
Acquiring new objectives throughout the game
keeps play focused and goal-oriented.
Each player is also given a secret goal during game setup. In most games, this would likely be an end-game goal that could make or break your strategy. But in Cosmogenesis, this initial goal is the same kind of short-to-medium-term goal as all the other objective cards in the game. This initial goal will likely influence your game-long strategy, but it isn't the end-all-be-all. Instead, it just gives every player something to work towards right from the start of the game, in order to keep everyone's play laser-focused. From turn 1 all the way through round 6 (the final round of the game), every player has goals to work towards.
Difficult to explain; easy to play
These objective tokens use pictures and icons to explain what they do, and there is a one-pager player aide that explains what each one does. But the graphics are very simple and usually easy to decipher. Basically, they show pictures of the minimum requirements to meet the goal, such as the type and size of planet(s), moon(s), and so forth needed to achieve the goal.
Once you start playing and seeing how everything works and fits together, these graphics are easy to read and the game plays very smoothly. Overall, most of the game rules are pretty easy and intuitive. But for some reason, I always have a really hard time teaching the game to new player, and the explanation always makes the game feel way more complicated than it actually is. I think the problem is that the rulebook isn't great, and the player aides are very lacking.
Each player gets a small player aide card that lists the actions you can perform on your turn. It would have been nice if the backside of this aide had more rules information, such as an explanation or overview of how collisions work, or an icon glossary, or a scoring summary, or some combination thereof.
More or better player aides would have been welcome.
There's also 2 pages of communal player aides that have explanations of all the objective tokens and special rules for some unique gameplay objects. But there's only one copy of each of these aides, which means they need to be passed around from player to player as needed. This works fine, but it does slow down the pace of the game, as players often have to read these aides on their turn, while everyone else just sits and waits without being able to read the aide themselves and plan their next turn.
Only having a single player aide for explaining objectives and other game effects also means that when you're explaining the rules, the other players aren't able to follow along, unless they all huddle around the one player aide. The lackluster player aides just serve to raise the barrier of entry unnecessarily, and makes it harder for players to follow along as they just listen to the player with the rulebook verbally explain the rules.
Thankfully, all the objectives after the initial ones are face-up, so players can always ask how they work without feeling like they're giving away secret strategies. Honestly, I don't even see any reason for why the starting objective would have to be face-down, so you could probably play them all face-up so that you can explain everything to each player. Again, since each player is going to be focusing on accomplishing their own goal, they are unlikely to go out of their way to try to deny components to another player.
Each player is building their own solar system, completely independent of the other players.
It would be kind of cool if there were more ways to influence other players' board. I get that star systems are very far away from each other, and don't have much impact on each other, but there are opportunities for some realistic interaction. Given the timescales on which a game turn takes place (each game round representing roughly a billion years), it is not unreasonable to say that an asteroid, comet, or moon could be ejected from one player's system, and captured by another player's system. Or there could even be an "intergalactic" board, on which players can influence events that can happen in deep space and affect some or all of the players' systems.
I'm not suggesting that we should be able to trigger Gamma Ray Bursts that can wipe out all life on another player's board, or anything strictly adversarial like that. This game would not benefit from having that level of petty adversity. But I could see there being an option to potentially throw an errant comet out of your system and placing it in someone else's. That could be an interesting rubber banding mechanic, as players with higher scores can potentially give free resources to poorer-performing players. This would force players to pay more attention to what the other players are doing, and how many points they are scoring.
Grand scope; less grand components
Cosmogenesis is small project from a minor publisher, built with a pretty low budget. The whole game is played with cardboard cut-outs and a few tiny plastic discs. Everything, including the artwork, seems designed for function rather than aesthetics. This looks fine, and is good for the readability of the board, but it leads to a rather bland presentation. For having such a grandiose theme, the pedestrian design is very disappointing -- especially compared to something like Photosynthesis, which looks gorgeous. Cosmogenesis just doesn't pop off the table the way that Photosynthesis does.
Cosmogenesis lacks the table presence of Photosynthesis.
I can certainly imagine a more attractive version of this game that maybe uses painted plastic or wooden miniatures of planets, comets, and asteroids, standing on little bases, and creating a miniature solar system diorama. Maybe these miniatures could even rotate on their bases? That would certainly look cool! But it would also be much more expensive to manufacture, and might be a bit fiddley to play. Alas, all we get is a bunch of cardboard discs.
Much of the potential educational quality is also hamstrung by the bland design. The game could have taken the opportunity to provide some brief explanations of what its different astronomical objects are, what they are made of, and how they are formed. Why might a gas giant appear green, as opposed to blue or red? Is it because of the elements or chemicals in the atmosphere? Do the different colors of gas giants in the game even have a basis or justification in real astronomy? Is it just a gameplay contrivance? I don't know, because the game makes no effort to explain any such difference.
Lack of production also hurts long-term replayability. There's only the single player board that offers only a single configuration for a solar system. I would have liked to have seen the inner-most orbit or 2 be more restrictive in terms of how advanced life can evolve, due to the excessive heat of being so close to the sun. Perhaps a back side to each player board might include a more restrictive "Goldilocks Zone" that limits the placement of liquid water and habitable planets. This could act as a "hard mode" for experienced players, especially if they are playing against new players, who could use the less restrictive side of the board. This would have added little-to-no additional cost to developing and printing the game, and would have added some welcome variety to repeat playthroughs.
With a higher budget, I could imagine a version of this game that includes different boards for different types or configurations of stars, each capable of supporting different numbers of planets, and each having different habitable Goldilocks Zones. Maybe each player could have a different board with stars that are different colors, brightnesses, and sizes that influence the configuration of their board. Or there could be binary or trinary star systems.
The backsides of the player boards are un-used and do not include alternate solar system configurations.
Again, no such luck. Every player is playing on the exact same board, every time. The only variety comes in which objectives you draw, how you develop your system, and whether you choose to add the extension orbits. This hurts replayability, because repeat plays start to feel very same-y over time.
Cosmogenesis is a good game. Everybody I've played it with has liked it. It plays very well, the objectives give each player clear goals to strive towards, it moves along at a brisk pace, and the scores are always competitive in the end. Just be prepared to have a difficult time figuring it all out for the first time, and don't expect it to keep providing fresh experiences beyond the first few plays.
WHAT I LIKE
- Cosmological theme
- Somewhat educational
- Plays very smoothly
- Always something to do and something to build towards on your turn
- Focused and goal-oriented
- Elegantly-designed, highly-functional components
- Almost no player interaction
WHAT I DON'T LIKE
- Could use more player aides
- Only the 1 player board
- Modest production quality
- Almost no player interaction
- Lack of variety
FINAL GRADE: C+
Manufacturer(s): Ludonova.
Lead Designer(s): Yves Tourigny
Artist(s): Tim Barton & David Prieto
Original release: 2017
MSRP: $50 USD
Player(s): 2-4 players (best with 3-4 players)
Age Recommendation: 10 years old and up
Game Length: 90 minutes
Official site: Ludonova