New Game Releases at Game Market 2023 Spring: Introducing GALAXY ECLIPSE!
At the Game Market 2023 Spring event, □○GAMES is excited to release two new games, one of which is GALAXY ECLIPSE. In this post, we will introduce you to this thrilling new game.
For information about our other new release, Gogasha — 業我捨, please follow the provided link.
The stars revolve, and the rules invert.
GALAXY ECLIPSE is a 2-player game that requires insight and decision-making, similar to the popular game Daifugo. The objective is to outwit your opponent and seize control of the galaxy.
Players are initially dealt planet cards with stars and numbers on them. Throughout the game, they will play these cards to gain an advantage over their opponent.
The game progresses through three main steps:
- Check the UP/DOWN direction of the central card!
- Set your planet card in the designated area!
- Rotate the central card according to the direction of the three areas!
Players take turns completing these steps, and the first player to run out of cards wins.
For a more detailed explanation of the rules, please watch the instructional video provided below.
Rule Explanation Video
A Game of Strategy: Continue, Reverse, and Plan with Three Areas
In GALAXY ECLIPSE, the key to a successful offense and defense lies in assessing your own and your opponent’s limits in a continuous state and making timely decisions to reverse the game in your favor.
In traditional stop-style games, like Daifugo, the strength of the cards in your hand is determined by their playability, with more versatile cards considered stronger and more situational cards considered weaker. However, this conventional wisdom does not apply to GALAXY ECLIPSE.
In this game, the strength of each player’s planet cards constantly changes according to the rotation direction determined by the relationships of the three areas. A card that was the strongest in one turn could instantly become the weakest with no playable options in the next.
In GALAXY ECLIPSE, the essential skills for playing are insight into your opponent’s hand and the decision-making ability to seize the right opportunities. Players must read their opponent’s remaining cards and change the rotation direction to create the most favorable timing for themselves, based on the relationships of the numbers and stars in the three areas.
There are various ways to do this. You can play your own cards or force your opponent to change by maintaining the rotation direction and competing with extreme numbers. If reversing the rotation does not improve the numerical arrangement, you can also use stagnation or pass count to reset the field.
The presence of effect cards is another crucial aspect of the game. Tidal Destruction Phenomenon forces your opponent to revise their plans, Wormholes sneak unwanted cards into their hand, and Runaway Growth helps you skip your own burdens. Each of these cards has the power to completely change the situation, making them valuable to draw when you’re at a disadvantage.
Even when you’re in a losing position, the strength of the last card in your opponent’s hand is in your control. The key to mastering GALAXY ECLIPSE is to identify the constantly changing strengths of the cards, never overlook any possibilities, and maintain control over the rotation and field numbers until the very last card is played.
Strategies are chained and looped
At □○GAMES, our theme is to design deeper thinking experiences in our games, and for GALAXY ECLIPSE, we delved further into this concept by incorporating the theme of card games. In this game, we focused on striking a balance between overall strategic depth and the potential for instantaneous reversals.
Revisiting the Enjoyment of Daifugo and Rethinking Game Experiences
In designing GALAXY ECLIPSE, we respected the base game of Daifugo, while striving for a simple yet entirely new gaming experience.
The enjoyment of Daifugo lies in the strategy building from the moment the hand is dealt to victory, the adjustment of plans through competition with other players, and the exhilaration of successful reads.
Moreover, there are countless local rules and many follower games, which show its extensibility.
However, a challenge is that the game can have a significant difference in advantage or disadvantage based on seating order or the initial hand. The core gameplay revolves around using strong cards or effects like 8-cuts to control the board and disposing of weaker cards, making it difficult to adopt a long-term strategy that takes multiple turns into account.
Due to these two points, Daifugo tends to be a game where the outcome can be easily predicted from the initial hand, and decisive moves that depend on whether one can play a card at that moment become stronger, while reads are discouraged.
A fluid chain of strategies
GALAXY ECLIPSE focuses on the strategic construction and exhilaration of successful reads of Daifugo and is designed to let players enjoy those moments multiple times throughout the game.
In GALAXY ECLIPSE, the strength of the cards in a player’s hand continuously changes as the UP/DOWN of playable cards depends on the three areas’ status, meaning no cards are consistently weak throughout the game.
Moreover, since the UP/DOWN switch is at the player’s discretion, players can actively gather information to read their opponents’ hands by playing their cards and considering when and why to switch.
This game is designed so that the board’s cards are almost never completely reset unless the player intentionally manipulates the situation. As a result, the numbers in the three areas continuously chain together, and each player’s move affects the game until the very end.
Through these efforts, we believe that GALAXY ECLIPSE is a game that can be enjoyed by a wide range of players, offering a strategic and immersive play experience in a 15-minute game while allowing for dynamic plays and potential reversals up to the very last moment.
Thank you for your support!
This will be □○GAMES’ second time participating in the Game Market!
At the last Game Market, we received a lot of support from people who purchased our games and even helped spread the word. Thank you so much! This time, we have created two new games, both of which we are confident and excited to share with you!
However, as fledgling game designers, we still struggle with promoting our games.
Therefore, we would appreciate your support in spreading the word about GALAXY ECLIPSE by following and retweeting us, so that more people can enjoy it!
We look forward to seeing you at Tokyo Big Sight at booth (Booth: 両-ス08)! □○GAMES’ Kaku and Maru will be waiting for you!
