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Quick Look: SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Designer: Tomáš Holek
Artists: 11 Different artists contributed
Publisher: CGE – Czech Games Edition
Year Published: 2024
Lead a scientific institution tasked with searching for traces of life beyond planet Earth in SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a eurogame for 1–4 players inspired by existing or emerging technologies and efforts in space exploration.
By launching probes to investigate nearby planets and moons, directing telescopes to distant star systems, and developing your equipment back on Earth, you will investigate the Solar System and beyond, searching for signs of life outside our planet. To aid in your exploration, you may also utilize 200+ cards that feature real technologies, projects, and discoveries, each of them with unique illustrations and effects.
SETI pays homage to space and planetary exploration, astronomy, the ongoing search for signs of life in the vastness of space, and efforts to understand the nature of life in the universe.
Review:
Main Game:
SETI is a Euro Game where you are playing as the leader of a scientific institute where your task is to search for traces of life beyond that of Earth.
You will do this by taking one main action and any number of free actions per ‘Go’ you have, and you keep doing this in turn order until every player has passed, when you perform a few upkeep actions before starting the next round, of which there are a total of 5 in the game.
During the game you will try to discover traces of alien life, which will in turn lead to 2 of the 5 alien species being discovered, giving you more scoring opportunities later in the game.
The game board is ‘big’, and the set up for our first game took me about 10-15 minutes as there are a lot of components to put out onto the board(s) as well as putting all the boards together themselves, but once set up is done the game is hugely impressive on the table, and is very colourful and striking to look at.
Player boards don’t really need any set up as such, and every player gets a bag of player tokens / parts in their own colour to use throughout the game.
For some, the rules may look complicated, but once you get into the game structure, they do an excellent job of explaining each of the actions you can make on your turn, and the 4 page A5 player aids are invaluable as they mean you don’t need to refer to the rulebook too much during the game once you get into the swing of a turn and how it plays out.
I would also recommend checking out the official How to Play Video done by Cardboard Rhino as this goes through each action and how it works in excellent detail and clarity (it certainly helped me to understand some of the rules).
I’ve yet to play the SOLO game but I’m looking forward to giving them a try out, and if they are as good as those for Lost Ruins of Arnak I won’t be disappointed.
As mentioned earlier, the theme is that of searching space for traces of alien life, and you do this by launching probes into space and by traveling to planets in our solar system, gathering ‘publicity points’ as you go, which you can trade for new technologies to upgrade your actions, or to purchase extra cards to play from your hand during each go you take.
The mechanics are solid once again from a CGE game, and the game flows nicely from player to player, and although there isn’t a huge amount of player interaction, there are enough instances of your action affecting those of the player(s) that follow you to keep it interesting.
The rotating 3 ring central space board area is a fantastically novel part of the game, and this can rotate at certain points when you don’t want it to, as this moves probes into different areas of space and can muck up your plans, or those of others. I enjoyed this, even when it meant I was on the wrong side of it happening.
On your turn you take one of 8 possible main actions which are;-
LAUNCH a probe
ORBIT a planet
LAND on a planet or moon
SCAN nearby starts
ANALYZE data
PLAY a card for its effect
RESEARCH a technology
PASS for the round
For more in-depth info on what the above actions entail, you can download a free copy of the rulebook from the game page on the CGE site, or from BGG, as it would take too long to detail all of the above here in this review.
You can also do as many free actions as you are able to, either before, during or after your main action, and these include playing a card for its effect shown in the top left corner, which include added movement for your probe, extra money or extra energy.
You can also swap 2 resources of one type for 1 of another, and you can also place data from your storage area into your computer and gain rewards if you cover up any symbols shown when doing this.
You gain points by performing the above main and free actions, and these in turn move your score marker on the track, and at the end of 5 rounds the player with the most points wins.
There are also MILESTONE markers on the score track, which when passed allow you to place one of your markers on one of the 4 end game scoring bonuses.
You can score points from these for such things as collecting sets of tech, markers on alien traces and for completing mission cards.
Again for me, CGE and its artists have produced fantastic artwork on the over 200 cards within the game, as well as the boards and player aids. The components themselves are I believe once again made from re-wood, which is recycled wood, and these are very good and obviously help to keep the amount of plastic used down to a minimum.
The production all round on this game is an absolute winner. The boards were flat when opened up, which isn’t always the case with new games, and the recessed elements to the player boards were superb when slotting new tech tiles in place.
All the cards had superb artwork and were laid out to make them easily readable and identifiable when it came to playing / using them during your turns.
The rulebook was easy to follow as it was set out in a very logical order detailing all the game actions as well as all the other required elements within the game, both multiplayer and solo.
The individual player aids were also done superbly well, and will certainly be a help to players as they decide what to do.
For me there aren’t that many negatives to mention, I have seen some people say the game is one round too long, but personally I think it was just about right, as you need time to build to your player board engine to fully appreciate the game, and get the benefit from when the 2 alien species are discovered.
The only thing I would like to have on the player board is maybe a slot running across the top, that would allow you to put your hand of cards into during the game.
I have several CGE games, namely Lost Ruins of Arnak, Kutna Hora and Starship Captains, and for me on first play SETI may well have just gone into 1st place as my favourite CGE game above Arnak, which is quite something as I absolutely love playing Arnak, both for the theme and for the gameplay itself.
If you have any of these games then you should seriously consider getting or certainly playing SETI, as I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if like me you enjoy the others mentioned here.
SETI may be the Search For Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, but for me it also qualifies as Superbly Engaging Thrilling Intuitive.
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Carl King- Reviewer