Kane Klenko is the master of real-time games. If there is a real time game on the market, there's a good chance he invented it. He created Fuse and Flatline, and now we have his latest hit, Cosmic Factory. Cosmic Factory is a game for 2-6 players, ages 10+. It takes approximately 20 minutes to play and retails for $30 on Amazon. In this tile placement game, you are trying to build a nine-tile galaxy in a short amount of time. Setup 1. Give each player a scoreboard, one token of each color (green, blue, orange) and a white star token. 2. Put the 54 Galaxy tiles in the bag. 3. Put the sand timer and three bonus tokens in the middle of the table. 4. Shuffle the twenty Kaos cards, and deal five face-down near the play area (one for each round). Game Play 1. Reveal the Kaos card for the round. 2. Each player draws nine galaxy tiles out of the bag. Choose three, placing them face-down and pass the remainder left or right depending on the round. With the six you just received, choose three, placing them face-down, and pass the remaining three in the same direction as before. The final three you receive will be placed face-down with your other six tiles without you looking at them. 3. Flip the sand timer. You have one minute to arrange your tiles into a 3 x 3 grid, trying to create large zones of the same color. You may also grab one of the bonus tokens mentioned earlier, if you believe one of your zones is the largest zone of that color among your competitors. 4. Score each of the three color zones, by advancing the corresponding colored token on your scoreboard. Score your longest asteroid path by advancing the white star on your scoreboard. Add or subtract points depending on if you were right about your bonus token. Add points from Kaos cards if appropriate. 5. The game will last five rounds. After that add up the points from your lowest scoring token with the points from the white star. Most points wins! Review I am not the biggest fan of real-time games. I like to sit, think, examine my pieces, and map out my strategy. It's a bit like how I live my life, a little slower and more methodical than most. However, this game was really fun. It's simple to teach, simple to play, and doesn't overstay its welcome like other real-time games can. It also has some familiar mechanics in the drafting of tiles, the placing of tiles, and the scoring being based on your worst results. This keeps you honest, either each round trying to build equally, or round to round making sure one color doesn't get too far ahead of the others, as it will do you no good in the end. There's also a fair amount of replay value, as you only see 25% of the Kaos cards each game, and not even in the same order either. If you like quick, fun, filler games, then this one would be right up your alley ... or galaxy.

See all our Family Game Night articles here.


Copyright 2019 Stuart Dunn Your purchase of the resources mentioned here through Amazon affiliate links benefits the author of this article.