iOS, Android, PC •
Wrapping up our major Gen Con stories is our favorite new mobile developer of 2017, Temple Gates. They burst onto the scene this year with the game I can’t shut up about, Race for the Galaxy. We all agree it’s the bee’s knees, and is a clear contender for GOTY come December. Lucky for us, Temple Gates doesn’t plan on being a one hit wonder and have already begun development on their next App Store entry, Race for the Galaxy’s big brother, Roll for the Galaxy.
Roll for the Galaxy is a dice-building game that uses all the icons we’ve come to vaguely understand in RftG and puts them on dice. You roll a handful of dice each turn and then assign them in a convoluted and confusing manner that makes you long for the days when you only had to look up icons. As you expand your empire, goods are converted into more dice, giving you more options, and so on. Despite the dice, the game feels a lot like Race, but also feels very different. Yeah, I know that doesn’t make any sense, but you should be used to me babbling like a toddler by now.
Roll for the Galaxy is another one of those games languishing in my basement, unplayed. I actually like it quite a bit, but the thought of trying to teach the dice/worker mechanism in this game has always caused me to put it back on the shelf come game night. Here’s hoping that the digital version will clear away some of that fear by automating the details.
Temple Gates has only just begun development on Roll for the Galaxy, so we shouldn’t expect it any time soon. While that’s a bummer, it also means that Keldon Jones, the guru behind Race for the Galaxy’s brilliant AI, will have more time to get Roll for the Galaxy’s AI sharpened to a fine edge. More on this one as it moves closer to release.
Because it’s so early along, there are no videos of the digital version out there. Instead, watch Joel Eddy run through the mechanisms and give his thoughts via DriveThruReview.
Love Roll for the Galaxy almost more than, the only bad news here is that the physical copy I have might end up gathering dust on the shelf perpetually after this release.
I personally don’t mind if a competent app leads to a physical game gathering dust; I’ll enjoy the app while it is stable and somewhere down the road I’ll still have a nice physical copy to dust off and play with friends and family.
I care about Roll right around one-tenth as much as I care about news for Brink of War and Alien Artifacts. Those are both excellent expansions.
Any news on TG’s plans for the rest of the RftG series?
+1000 even though I’m still getting my ass whipped pretty constantly I really love the card game. The dice mechanic really doesn’t interest me.
IIRC Roll was pretty cool in cardboard, what with the little colored dice and all. I forget exactly how the gameplay differed from Race, truth be told.
The gameplay was essentially the same, with players developing new technologies and colonizing or capturing planets, the only real difference was using the dice as resources available for a particular action instead of discarding cards to pay for cards after picking an action.
And the box was bigger.