Games Review - Interstellar Adventures, a Cooperative Puzzle Adventure

 Games Review - Interstellar Adventures

In the depths of space, a cryptic signal reaches The Atlas from a previously unexplored planet. Aboard, Captain Silna and her crew scramble to decipher the call. What follows is an adventure that pushes our crew to confront their limits.

Using powers of logic and deduction, the crew set out on a mission to untangle the unknown. Exploring an obscure new world, battling ravenous plants, and narrowly escaping missile attacks, our crew embark on a quest that makes them second guess everything they thought they knew…

Interstellar Adventures is a new cooperative puzzle adventure from Minty Noodles. I met the people behind it at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham in May, and was immediately drawn in by the cool art and cute characters. After talking with them for a little, they were happy to send me a preview copy of review purposes.

It's a really fun concept, and one I haven't really come across before. The game itself is episodic. My preview copy had episode 1 in it, with episodes 2 and 3 being included in the Kickstarter launch next month. It's primarily, but not entirely, card based. Each card you draw directs you to draw or discard other cards. Cards you draw remain in play until you're told to discard them, at which point they leave play entirely. Sometimes you have a single card on the tabletop to work with, but at other times you might have half a dozen or so cards in front of you in play. Sometimes the next card to draw is obvious, indicated with a clear number printed on the card. But a lot of the time it isn't, and this is where the puzzle solving comes in. You often need to figure out a series of clues, some of them obviously presented as clues, others a lot more subtle and tricky to find. 

It definitely has escape room elements to it, with the nature of the puzzles forcing you to think around the problem rather than tackling it head on. I found it challenging and interesting, occasionally struggling some of the puzzles only to feel very pleased and clever when things fell into place. Playing through it with a couple of people definitely helps, as you can really benefit from different perspectives or having someone to bounce ideas off. If you find yourself completely stuck, there are hint cards that slowly build up to solution cards, so you'll never end up just tossing the whole thing aside in frustration.

There are other challenges contained here too, testing dexterity as well as brain power that I found really interesting and well done. The components are well made and put together, and really added a new layer of interest without distracting from the core puzzling. 

The artwork is vibrant and fun and the cast of characters is really strong. As we meet each member of the crew we get to draw a bio card for them, that remains on the table, so we're always familiar with the characters in play. The setting is very retro sci-fi, reminiscent of early Star Trek without ever being derivative.

I found the instruction manual a little lacking in detail, and really had to start playing to see how things worked, but the game itself is very simple and was easily grasped once I dived in.

Due to the nature of the game, there is little or no replayability here, which is one of my few concerns. I played through it once with my partner, and then I gave my three kids a run at it, and it was really fun watching them tackle the problems, often with more ease than I did. There are also a few very well hidden trophy missions, which we missed entirely on our playthrough but which my kids managed to find. But apart from that, it's the kind of game you play and pass on. It's designed in such a way to make that possible, nothing is destroyed while playing and everything seems robust enough to cope with multiple playthroughs. 

The Kickstarter campaign launces on 1st October, and I'm waiting to see what the cost of the game is going to be. I really enjoyed playing through the preview adventure, and I'd definitely like to play more of the storyline. But I'm not willing to spend a lot on something I can only really play once. Our playthroughs took between 30 and 60 minutes, and the second and third episodes look like they might be longer, but it's still all going to be about how much people are prepared to invest for a single games session.

Interstellar Adventures from Minty Noodles launches on Kickstarter (link) on 1st October. I was loaned a preview copy in exchange for this honest review.

It's great watching them puzzling together!

The cards are large, colourful and full of detail.