It's a cooperative team survival game. Players become crew members of a small spaceship scanning dangerous sectors of galaxy. The missions last just 10 real-time minutes (hyperspace jump, sector scan, hyperspace jump back) and the only task the players have is to protect their ship.
On 2 CDs (or Scenario cards if you don't have a CD player available) are ten minute long soundtracks that represent central computer announcements about the presence of various threats. These vary from space battleships and interceptors to different interstellar monsters and abominations, asteroids or even intruders and malfunctions on the spaceship. Players have to agree who will take care of which task and coordinate their actions (moving around the ship, firing weapons, distributing energy, using battlebots to deal with intruders, launching guided missiles, etc.) in real time to defend the ship. Only a well-working team can survive 10 minutes and make the jump back to safety.
The game offers several difficulty levels, huge variability and a unique experience for one to five player teams. One mission lasts only about 30 minutes, including setup and evaluation.
(From Czech Games Edition)
Misprinted CDs: In some Rio Grande copies, the labels on the Tutorial and Mission CDs are switched, or one CD is missing and there are two copies of the other CD with two different labels. More information: 1 2 3 4
Misprinted Cards: In the latest Rio Grande copies, the threat cards are printed on smaller cardstock than other editions. This results in not being able to shuffle the threat cards from the expansion into the deck. Czech Games will replace the misprinted cards. More information: 1
Awards:
Game components:
1 Spaceship Board
10 Action Boards in 5 colors
7 Trajectory Boards
1 Mission Steps Board
10 plastic figures
55+ blocks in 6 colors
1 blue and 3 green cylinders
90 Action Cards
6 Heroic Action Cards
55 Threat Cards
16 Scenario Cards
18 damage tiles
26 internal threat tokens
16 numbered tokens
2 CDs with 16 soundtracks
1 ship’s log
1 Rulebook
1 “How to Become a Space Explorer” handbook