Review: Wild Space

Introduction & Overview

A new galaxy has been discovered on the edge of the Empire! The time has come to explore this new horizon full of mysteries and opportunities. Expand your crew with animals of different species. Enlist the help of robots, recruit the best specialists in each profession, and catch the eye of imperial emissaries who will entrust you with vital missions. Will you seize this chance to amass a fortune worthy of praise and envied across the entire universe?

This is the premise behind Wild Space, designed by Joachim Thôme, the mind behind Dicium. The game was first published in 2020 by Catch Up Games in a French edition. The artwork is by Amélie Guinet, who previously worked on Unlock!: Exotic Adventures.

It is published in Spanish by Tranjis Games (although the game is completely language-independent, save for the rulebook). It supports 1 to 5 players, with a recommended minimum age of 10 and an approximate playing time of 15 to 40 minutes. The MSRP is €24.95. For this review, we used a copy of the Spanish edition by Tranjis Games, kindly provided by the publisher as a review copy.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and base), measuring 20.2×20.2×5.8 cm (a square box similar in size to Draftosaurus), we find the following items:

• 120 Cards (70×70 mm):
  • 108 Crew Cards:
    • 60 Specialists
    • 24 Emissaries
    • 18 Robots
    • 6 Captains
  • 12 Hostile Planet Cards
• 10 Planet Tiles
• 25 Spaceship Tokens (5 of each color)
• 5 Veteran Tokens (1 of each color) (cardboard)
• Scorepad (paper)
• Rulebook

How to Play

Wild Space is a card game where players have 10 turns to assemble the best possible crew. These cards feature a card type (emissaries, which provide endgame scoring criteria; specialists, trained in a specific discipline; or robots, which provide direct points) and an animal species (rhino, octopus, monkey, bear, lizard, and owl). In turn, many of these cards allow you to play additional cards (some subject to prerequisites). On each turn, a player must either land one of their spaceships on one of a planet’s two sectors (each sector provides two specific actions, each usable once per player per game) or explore it (moving an already landed spaceship up to trigger a basic action). Certain cards also allow you to advance a marker along your Captain card—received at the start of the game as your crew’s founding member—granting various bonuses. Once everyone has completed their 10 turns, crews are evaluated: players score points for each set of six different species, for each card of a matching species beyond the second, for robot values, for the Captain track, and for the scoring criteria on emissary cards.

Key Concepts

The core element of the game is the Crew Cards. These cards must first pass through your hand before being added to your crew area on the table. Each card displays a colored border denoting its type: specialist (blue), emissary (brown), or robot (green). A symbol indicating the card type also appears in the lower-left corner. In the upper-right corner, you will find the crew member’s profession, if any. Specialists and emissaries also belong to one of six animal species—owls, lizards, monkeys, rhinos, octopuses, and bears—indicated by an icon in the upper-left corner alongside an illustrative portrait. Underneath the species (or robot) icon, a medal may appear, indicating that the crew member is a veteran. On emissary cards, a mission with a specific scoring condition is printed across the top banner. Robots usually show a flat victory point value. Finally, most cards feature an action in the lower-left corner, sometimes tied to a prerequisite, which triggers the moment the card is played. At game end, alongside emissary objectives and flat robot points, players will score points for complete sets of all six animal species, as well as for multiple cards of the same animal species once a minimum threshold is reached. Crucially, a single card can contribute to both types of set collection simultaneously.

Each player begins the game with a starting crew member in their play area: the Captain. In addition to having a species and a profession, Captain cards feature a track of rewards printed along the top banner, unlocked from left to right whenever the player recruits a card with the veteran icon. A small token is used to track the latest unlocked bonus.

To execute actions during the game, players use five Planet Tiles. Two of them are always present in every game, while the remaining three are drawn randomly. These three display a numeric value indicating the minimum crew size required before a player may access them. There are three types of planets, each identified by a specific color and a threshold number corresponding to the minimum number of crew members required to explore it. Every planet features two sectors, each offering an action and, optionally, activation costs or prerequisites. Across the top of each sector, symbols display the game’s two basic actions (play a card or draw cards). As a general rule, planet actions allow you to either play cards or draw cards from the display.

The sector action, as well as the basic action above it, can only be used once per player per game. To track these activations, each player has a set of Spaceships in their chosen color. Each spaceship lets you trigger the bottom action of a sector and later explore that same sector’s basic action. The fundamental restriction is that you cannot place more than one of your spaceships on the same sector of a planet (though you may place a ship on each of the two different sectors of that planet). Consequently, a player’s entire game will consist of 5 landing actions and 5 exploring actions.

That is enough to get started.

Preparación de la Partida

1. Shuffle the crew deck and deal 3 cards to each player. Place the remaining cards face down as a draw deck in the center of the table and reveal the top three cards to form a market row.
2. Place five planet tiles: the two starting planet tiles face up, and one planet tile of value 3, 6, and 9 face down (showing their reverse side).
3. Each player chooses a Captain card and a player color, taking the 5 spaceships and 1 veteran marker, which is placed next to their Captain card.
4. Finally, choose a starting player.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Wild Space is played over 10 rounds. In each round, starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, each player takes a single turn.

On your turn, you must choose one of two options:

• Land. Send one of your available spaceships from your reserve to a sector that does not already contain one of your ships on an accessible planet (either the two starting planets or, if your crew meets the size requirement, one of the three distant ones). Then, resolve the sector’s action, paying any required costs.
• Explore. Move a spaceship already situated in the bottom section of a planet sector up to its top section, resolving one of that sector’s basic actions.

Afterward, play passes to the player on your left.

Keep the following rules in mind:

• Whenever a player draws a face-up card from the market, it is immediately replenished from the deck, even if that player still has more cards to draw.
• When an action allows drawing cards, the player may discard the entire visible market row and replenish it before picking, at the cost of discarding one card from their hand.
• When an action allows you to play a card and that card features an additional action, trigger it immediately after putting the card into play. If the card lists a prerequisite to trigger this bonus action, you must fulfill it. Prerequisites usually require having a crew member of a certain profession or discarding cards. Resolving this secondary action is optional if you prefer not to or cannot meet the requirement.
• Some cards show a veteran medal. Whenever you add one of these cards to your crew, advance your marker one space to the right on your Captain card track and immediately gain the benefit shown on that space.

Game End

The game ends once all players have completed their 10 turns, which means all five spaceships have been moved to the upper exploration section of their sectors. At this point, final scoring takes place, where each player earns:

• 15 Victory Points for each complete set of six cards representing all six different species.
• 5 Victory Points for each crew card of an identical species (robots excluded) starting from the third card onward (the first two cards do not score).
• The flat Victory Points indicated on any robots recruited into the crew.
• Victory Points from the Captain card track if the veteran marker has reached or passed a scoring space.
• Victory Points granted by the mission conditions printed on emissary cards.

The player with the most victory points wins. In case of a tie, the tied player with the fewest crew cards wins. If the tie persists, victory is shared.

Variants

Solo Mode: The player competes against an automated opponent driven by a deck of special cards. These cards manipulate the cards available in the market display. Additionally, each revealed card grants bonuses to the virtual rival that must be factored in during final scoring.

Personal Opinion

Today we take a look at one of those releases that, in a way, rides on the coattails of an earlier hit by the same publisher. I am not saying it is the exact same style of game, or that it attempts to be a sequel, but there are definitely common touchpoints—especially visually—such that our subconscious draws parallels and primes us to relive fond gaming memories. Let’s see if Wild Space succeeds, but not before thanking the folks at Tranjis Games for providing the review copy that made this tocho-review possible.

The title I am linking it to is none other than CuBirds (read its tocho-review here), one of Catch Up Games’ biggest commercial hits. As you will see in just a few paragraphs, neither mechanically nor in gameplay sensations do they share much beyond catering to a family audience. Yet the low-poly aesthetic and reliance on stylized animals forge an undeniable mental connection. All that said, let’s leave visual impressions for later and dive into what really matters, before I ramble on forever.

In Wild Space, your objective is to assemble the highest-scoring crew possible. Accordingly, set collection serves as one of the primary mechanics, as the lion’s share of your points will come from grouping cards effectively. These cards represent crew members belonging to one of six animal species (plus robots, which do not contribute to sets and simply yield direct victory points).

At the end of the game, you will score points for sets of six distinct species, as well as for accumulating multiple cards of the same species—bearing in mind that the first two cards of a given species score nothing, rewarding you only from the third card onward. Furthermore, crew cards fall into one of three distinct categories: robots (mentioned above), specialists (bearing a specific profession icon), and emissaries (granting mission-based endgame scoring criteria).

The second and most crucial mechanic is hand management. Every player receives just ten turns across the entire match to take actions, which fundamentally boil down to drawing cards or playing a card. When drawing, you pick from a market of three face-up cards and a draw deck, with the option to draw face-up cards (which replenish instantly) or pull blindly from the top of the deck. When playing a card, you simply place it from your hand into your play area while adhering to any placement restrictions. For instance, some actions require discarding a card to play another, while others require playing a card with a specific icon.

So far, everything sounds fairly standard. The real magic lies in the combos these cards unleash: a large percentage trigger an immediate effect the moment they join your crew. These chain reactions allow you to draw more cards or deploy another card immediately, often tied to small prerequisites of their own.

As you might imagine, the strength of the game lies in hand optimization—setting up cascading card combos that, when pulled off smoothly, feel immensely gratifying. In these moments, I am always reminded of The Castles of Burgundy (read its tocho-review here), by our beloved Stefan Feld, where the underlying mechanics are simple and turn actions are atomic, yet their ripple effects allow you to chain several plays within a single turn.

It is pure bliss for eurogamers. Chaining together what amounts to three or four actions in a single turn delivers that delightful rush of endorphins that leaves a broad grin on your face. That satisfaction only grows the longer you hold out for the big turn, spending previous rounds hoarding the exact cards needed to execute the cleanest cascade.

And all of this in just ten turns! A constraint that might initially sound like a drawback actually turns out to be one of the game’s greatest assets. It forces you to optimize every single turn to the limit, leaving everyone wanting to play again the second it wraps up—making it effortless to string multiple plays back-to-back.

Furthermore, the generous deck size provides substantial replayability. So much, in fact, that it gives rise to the game’s main flaw: the impact of card draw luck. If Lady Luck decides that a certain species, profession, or card type simply will not show up in your hand, your scoring potential can plummet through no fault of your own, while an opponent coasts through with perfect draws.

This would not be as noticeable if the game included meaningful player interaction to meddle with an opponent’s crew development. Instead, Wild Space is the kind of game where everyone is absorbed in their own tableau; outside of emissary milestones, you will rarely make a move with an opponent’s board in mind. A light blocking mechanism to counter lucky card runs would have been a welcome addition. Then again, remember that the entire game lasts only ten turns per player. If luck tilts the scales, you just shuffle up and play another match, which briskly takes no more than 10 minutes per person.

Circling back to variability, the game includes a pool of planet tiles that subtly alter available actions from session to session. Moreover, these distant planets start face-down and locked. They are revealed only when at least one player builds a large enough crew, though other players cannot visit them until their own crews meet that threshold. This creates a neat pacing dynamic, especially since these advanced planets feature more demanding prerequisites that require careful tactical planning.

All things considered, Wild Space strikes me as a thoroughly enjoyable game—the kind that pays for itself in just a few weeks because it hits the table with incredible ease. I would only advise against it if you demand high player interaction or thoroughly dislike combo-driven card games. Otherwise, it will likely hit the spot. As a point of reference, Gizmos (read its tocho-review here) by the ever-reliable Phil Walker-Harding comes to mind, although in that case, in my view, the game fell a bit short in its overall pacing. Still, the satisfaction of chaining actions and the sensations it evokes are very much alive here.

Moving on to production quality, the components are fairly decent. The cards boast sturdy cardstock, though their slightly stiff finish combined with the square format makes shuffling somewhat awkward (sleeving is highly recommended). The planet tiles are thick and well-pressed, whereas the veteran marker punchboard feels slightly thin, even if it fulfills its role without issue. The rulebook is logically structured, first explaining the core concepts before detailing turn structure alongside plenty of illustrative examples to clear up any doubts.

The visual style is rather unique. Using low-poly angular volumes to represent animals looks distinctive, though it sits in a bit of a middle ground: it never quite achieves cuteness (unlike CuBirds), nor does it project a serious sci-fi tone. It personally brings back fond memories of Another World or Flashback, classic (and notoriously unforgiving) platformers from the 16-bit console era—especially the planets, whose color palettes closely mirror those stages. Nostalgia does the trick for me, but it is easy to see how others might find the art style unappealing.

And let’s wrap this up. Wild Space is a card game driven by set collection and hand management whose greatest asset is delivering immensely rewarding combo chains planned across a tight ten-turn clock. It always leaves you eager for one more round. On the downside, player interaction is practically non-existent, and a bit more bite would have helped buffer the luck of the draw that can skew occasional sessions. Fortunately, games wrap up in a flash, making any unlucky break fade fast and leaving behind a highly recommended filler. For all these reasons, I rate it a…