High Frontier and Leaving Earth
This post was originally written on cohost to accompany this design diary for The Banished Vault. In researching for the game I played two board games that directly tackled the problem of abstracting orbital mechanics for a game. These are some light thoughts on both.
High Frontier is a game with terrible politics, by a designer with even worse politics. That aside, the game is interesting in its devotion to being a simulation of the solar system and rocket flight. The adaptation of the math is a well done, and the route-finding/maze solving aspect in the energy routes to various destinations is appealing. It's a game that asks a lot of the player in both internalizing its system and constructing a strategy to win. Playing with experienced players is an exercise in understanding the technology combos as well as the solar system. One of the most straightforward ways to judge a game and what the designer is trying to say through it is in victory conditions, and here I find High Frontier deeply disappointing. Players are judged on establishing offworld factories and little else, so ultimately I find it a deeply inhuman game!
Leaving Earth is, by comparison, more focused. Set during the peak of the space race, players are judged on milestones of reaching orbit or landing on Mars. It has a very striking depiction of the solar system, square cards for every major energy region form a little hopscotch path through the solar system. Mathematically it pulls a wonderful little trick to combine impulse and thrust into one value, which is a 1:1 comparison against mass, with some shortcuts taken in that every rocket being single use so fuel is not factored. In addition to the math puzzle it highlights the resources required to keep humans alive in space, and has a wonderful early spaceflight feel with having to test your designs before having full confidence in them. I think it's a wonderful game, and if the premise interests you I would recommend it gladly.