One Deck Galaxy [Review]
Handelabra Games brings Asmadi Games’ follow up to One Deck Dungeon to PC and mobile.
One Deck Galaxy. Credit: Handelabra Games
One Deck Galaxy is a tabletop card and dice game published by Asmadi Games and is a followup to their popular One Deck Dungeon tabletop game. One Deck Galaxy has you building up your civilization from its homeworld to a Federation while fighting an adversary. The game can be played solo or in local co-op.
You choose from three homeworlds and five societies, combining them to build your civilization. These will grant you unique abilities, milestones, techs, and beginning dice resources. You also need to select an adversary, which acts like a ticking clock to win the game. Each adversary has its own set of rules that it follows to react to your actions and to cause time to pass in the game by running down the deck of cards.
One Deck Galaxy. Credit: Handelabra Games
You need to establish colonies, develop techs that grant you more abilities, perform research, build fleets, and achieve civilization milestones to increase your federation level. Each federation level you gain allows you to confront your adversary in its next tier of escalation, and once you’ve defeated them at every level you win the game. Everything is done through your dice rolls, but in the end your success is based on strategy rather than luck. You must place your dice wisely because even low rolls can be useful in the right case.
Handelabra Games’ digital version of the game does a great job of teaching the game through its tutorial, guided by a talkative AI that rigs the game to create the right situations for you to learn. I hadn’t yet played the physical version of the game and this might actually be a better way to learn to play than reading the rules.
One Deck Galaxy. Credit: Handelabra Games
One Deck Galaxy Isn’t a great looking game; its UI is utilitarian. Everything is completely flat, except for your dice that will roll in 3D, and there aren’t any of the effects or animations we’d see in something like Hearthstone. However, the UI is fairly intuitive and easy to understand, especially after completing the tutorial.
If you’re familiar with the board game, you’ll love this version of One Deck Galaxy. If you’re not, but enjoy turn based games and co-op experiences, I’d still say to give this one a shot.
One Deck Galaxy is available now for PC (Steam), iOS, and Android.
Overall Score: 6/10
Played on: Steam Deck
