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Galileo Project is a two to four player set collection game designed by Adrien Hesling and published by Sorry We Are French. It takes place in the same universe as Ganymede but 30 years after. You play as a cooperation that is looking to settle the four satellites of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. To do this you will need to gain influence from Earth and Mars and acquire robots to place on the four satellites.
The game takes place over several rounds and on your turn you have a number of actions available to you.
You can recruit a character. This will gain you a set amount of influence depending on which influence track your marker is on (Earth - Blue track or Mars - Red track). The character may then give you an action to perform or a bonus or end game scoring objective. If it is an end game scoring objective the card is tucked under your player board.
You can acquire a robot. All robots will be of either Earth influence or Mars influence and you must spend the amount of influence that corresponds to the robot you want to acquire. There are four robots and when you receive one you place this on one of the four moons. Then you move your development marker on the corresponding moon the number of spaces shown on the robot. This may give you additional bonuses/abilities or actions. The robots also have bonuses which get increasingly more powerful depending on the number of the same type of robot that you already have.
You can develop technology. There are four technologies available each game, you pay the relevant resources and take the technology. Technologies may give you one time actions/bonuses or ongoing abilities.
There are some optional actions you can perform such as spending a megacredit to switch from the Earth influence track to the Mars influence track at the beginning of your turn. You can also claim a Goal if you have fulfilled the requirements which will grant end game scoring.
Play continues this way until either the character deck is empty or when a player has built their 10th robot. End game scoring characters tucked under your player board must be paid for by spending one megacredit per character to be able to score them.
Points are awarded for your end game scoring characters, achieved goals, technologies and how far you moved on the corresponding moons. The player with the most points is the winner.
Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed the combo building in Ganymede and love this universe. So, when I heard about Galileo project I was very intrigued and just look at the box cover….stunning. How does this play? Is this on par with Ganymede, better or worse? Read on to find out.
Galileo Project, although set in the same universe as Ganymede, is a very different game. There are some similarities but it certainly warrants reviewing as a standalone game rather than as a comparison to Ganymede.
First off, the turns are lightning quick and very easy to understand. This is one of the virtues of this game and because the turns are quick the overall game length is very reasonable. The iconography for the most part is easy to understand. There were a few occasions when we needed clarification from the rulebook but this does a good job of explaining everything.
There are some crunchy decisions to be made in the game. Thinking about which influence track you are on when recruiting a character for its ability or end game scoring and planning on which robot you may want in a few turns is an interesting choice to make. There is decent variety in the characters in the deck with a range of abilities, bonuses and scoring potential. There always seemed to be options available and to choose from.
Another cool feature that I enjoy is the increasing power of the robots ability. The more you have of the same type of robot the bigger the pay off, specialising in a robot can be hugely powerful. But you may need to take a different robot to advance on a particular moon for its bonus. So there is a very nice balance of the robot’s power and advancing on the different moons for their abilities.
Some of the moon abilities allow you to hold more end game scoring characters, some provide energy as a resource, another allows you acquire robots cheaper by spending megacredits and one gives you VP based on the robot you have the most of. Pushing up certain moon tracks can grant you some pretty great rewards.
It all comes together very nicely, in a very accessible manner and plays relatively quick. It scales well for all player counts and with the quick turns it doesn’t drag at the higher player counts, although 2 players is very snappy.
