Science Fiction

Description from the publisher:

With the invention of Jump Drive, the race for the galaxy begins! Develop new technologies and settle worlds to build a space empire. Find winning card combinations!

Race for the Galaxy: Jump Drive is a fast-paced card game that introduces players to the Race for the Galaxy universe. Can you build the most prosperous galactic civilization?

Jump Drive is a standalone game and offers simpler rules and a shorter game than its older brother Race for the Galaxy.

In Colony, each player constructs and upgrades buildings, while managing resources to grow their fledgling colony. In a clever twist, dice are used as resources, with each side/number representing a different resource. Some resources are stable, allowing them to be stored between turns, while others must be used right away. Buildings provide new capabilities, such as increased production, resource manipulation, and additional victory points. Using dice-as-resources facilitates a dynamic, ever-changing resources management mini-game while players work to earn victory points by adding building to their tableau on their way to victory.

Colony includes 28 different building card types, of which only seven are used each game in addition to the fixed buildings that are used each time that you play.

Description from the publisher:

The largest, richest, and most diverse city on Earth, New Angeles is home to the Space Elevator that rises along its buckyweave tether and connects us to Luna and its invaluable Helium-3 deposits. It is here, in New Angeles, that you'll find the global headquarters for the worlds' most powerful megacorps: Haas-Bioroid, Globalsec, Jinteki, Melange Mining, NBN, and the Weyland Consortium. And it is here, in this shining beacon of human achievement and advancement, that these powerful megacorps enjoy a uniquely fertile breeding ground for their projects and their rivalries.

In New Angeles, you gain control of one of these megacorporations, then you use your wealth and influence to create more wealth and more influence. To do this, you cut deals and forge temporary alliances. You leverage your credits and assets to gain financial superiority over your corporate rivals. All the while, you also need to keep an eye toward the masses, striking deals with the other corps as necessary in order to keep a lid on crime, disease, and unrest. If you want to maximize your profit, you need to keep New Angeles open for business!

The Eighth Edition is finely produced with thick cardboard counters and a sturdy thick game board. The rules are in full color (with cartoon) and very well done. This humorously entertaining game pits two players against each other aboard a spaceship. One plays the ship's crew, trying to kill the evil and rapidly-multiplying aliens controlled by his opponent. And although the crew members have several weapons available to them, they don't know what effect those weapons will have until they try using them in combat against the Awful Green Things. Originally appeared in the Dragon magazine #28. The Outside the Znutar expansion, published in Dragon magazine #40, is included in the box in the Steve Jackson Games versions of the game.

A similar but more serious game is The Wreck of the B.S.M. Pandora.

Supplemental articles were published in TSR's Dragon Magazine including:

"The Awful Green Things From Outer Space" Tom Wham - Issue 28 (page 26)
Addenda "Outside the Znutar" Tom Wham - Issue 40 (insert)

Stellar Conflict is a fast-paced space combat game with real-time elements set in the Among the Stars Universe.

In this game, which reimplements the James Ernest and Tom Jolly design Light Speed, players take over the role of an alien race taking part on a space battle. Each player has his/her own fleet and based on the size of the battle, he/she chooses which ships will be deployed for combat (deployment phase). Each race has its own power and abilities which grants it different advantages in combat.

After both players have deployed their forces in this time-limited real-time phase, the combat phase begins.

The Combat Phase lasts a random number of Rounds based on which ships have been deployed on the battlefield. Each Round, different ships fire their weapons and perform their abilities trying to destroy enemy ships and/or complete objectives.

Stellar Conflict offers a more advanced, deeper alternative to Light Speed. Each race has its own fleet of different ships and abilities guaranteed to offer lots of replayability.