Spaceonauts! — Vincent Aliquo

The Game

Spaceonauts! is a card game for a table of friends who do not entirely trust each other. Everyone races to build a spaceship out of Ship cards—a capsule, a body, an engine, and fins—while playing Action cards to wreck everyone else’s. One Environment card, turned over at the start, changes how the whole round scores.

Ship card for an engine, with its cost along the bottom: a barrel, a circuit board and a wrench — A Ship card, with its cost along the bottom.

Action card, Alien Abduction: a flying saucer beams up cargo crates while a startled astronaut falls back. Everybody loses 2 resource cards. — An Action card. Everybody loses two resource cards.

The trailer, with sound.

A Turn

The player who jumps highest, closest to space, goes first. On your turn you play as many cards as you like, then draw two to end it, holding no more than eight. You can also trade two cards for one fresh draw without ending the turn. Matching cards stack, so two Alien Abductions take four cards from everyone.

Every Ship card costs specific Resources and a Wrench. A capsule takes one Metal, one Circuit and one Wrench. Fins are the only part that needs no wrench. Each ship gets one capsule, and as many of everything else as you can build.

Spaceonauts are the crew, and they do one of two jobs. Standing in front of your ship, a Spaceonaut cancels an opponent’s Action card and is worth 5 points. Aboard a Ship card it is worth 10, one to a card, and one for every two fins you have built.

Diagram of a completed spaceship laid out from Ship cards: capsule on top, body in the middle with a fin on each side, engine at the bottom — A ship that can launch: a capsule, a body, two fins and an engine.

Launch

The game ends when the table has bought three Launch cards between them. A Launch card costs three Resources, and you can only buy one with at least a capsule, a body, an engine and two fins. The first two are worth 5 points and the last is worth 10. The first player to finish a ship also takes the trophy card, for another 10.

capsule: 20
body: 10
engine: 10
fin: 5

A tie with the player who launched goes to the launcher. Between anyone else it goes to whoever has the most Spaceonauts aboard their ship, not standing around it.

The Planet Changes the Math

The Environment card makes the same hand play differently each round. On Spooky Planet every Spaceonaut is worth 10 more, so it pays to keep the crew together. On Lava Planet a ship with more than two fins scores 10 for each fin instead of 5.

Environment card, Spooky Planet: two nervous astronauts back to back with a flashlight and a radio. +10 points for every Spaceonaut. — “Don’t split the party!”

Environment card, Lava Planet: an astronaut beside an erupting volcano. If your spaceship has more than 2 fins, each fin is worth 10 points. — More than two fins, and every fin is worth 10.

Rules in Three Languages

I had the rulebook professionally translated into German and Traditional Chinese, and the cards went with it. In German an Environment card is an Umgebung and the icy planet is Eisiger Planet. In Chinese it is 環境, and Lava Planet becomes 熔岩星球.

Page 2 of the English rulebook: contents, setup and an example play setup of four cards

Page 2 of the German rulebook: Inhalt, Aufstellung and the example setup with the Eisiger Planet card

Page 2 of the Traditional Chinese rulebook: contents, setup and the example setup with the Lava Planet card

The same page in English, German and Traditional Chinese.

German Environment card, Umgebung: Eisiger Planet, an astronaut wrapped in a blanket in an ice cave. Wenn Raumschiff nur 2 Flossen hat, +10 Punkte für jeden. — Umgebung: Eisiger Planet, from the German edition.

Chinese Environment card, 環境: 熔岩星球, an astronaut toasting marshmallows on a stick beside an erupting volcano. 若宇航船有超過兩隻機翼，每一隻機翼算作十積分 — 環境: 熔岩星球, Lava Planet in the Chinese edition.

The full rulebooks: English, Deutsch and 繁體中文, each a four-page PDF.