EGO has a somewhat misleading title and a totally disingenuous box cover. The game has nothing at all to do with Freud and psychoanalysis, but is actually a trek across space, and is part of the Reiner Knizia ‘epic sci-fi trilogy’ published by Bitewing Games, along with SILOS and ORBIT. Like those games, it has a somewhat convoluted fully expanded name, Extraterrestrial Greeting Organization, which gives a better idea of the theme. Is should be noted, though, that aside from a space theme and tortured acronyms—and yes, the designer and publisher—the only things these games really have in common are they come in cardboard boxes.
EGO is a 2–5 player game in which ‘Rival ambassadors compete to befriend—and not offend—aliens in this epic galaxy trek.’ Bizarrely, this 2025 game is pretty much an overhaul of Knizia’s 2005 Beowulf: The Legend, reusing most of that game’s mechanisms, but with a much less jarring fit to the theme. (This is similar to the relationship between his Gold Country and Spectaculum, and as with the former, EGO’s rulebook includes a page from the publisher explaining why and how the earlier game was changed.)
Players are diplomats travelling together (in a ‘super ship’) through a sequence of alien civilisations residing in their own star systems, which are represented by one of the boards making up the central map. The first board is our Solar System and the last is the Arrival board, where final scoring happens. The 3 civilisation boards in between are randomly selected from 4 (Alliance System, Market System, Treasure System and Sinister System) and arranged in any order. Each star system has a different mix of gaining resources or penalties and bidding against each other in auctions; each also has some form of risk-taking action—these are optional, but it’s unlikely that you’ll win the game without participating in at least some of them. For example, the Sinister System’s event outcomes are generally negative, while the Treasure System offers benefits with penalties. The different boards and their ordering can significantly affect overall gameplay, offering a high degree of variation across games.
Playing the Game
The game looks much more complicated that it really is, and much of the busyness of the boards shown above is mere artistic clutter. In EGO, everyone progresses through the boards in a rigid order, taking a specific action within each distinct area; most of those actions are simply resource gain or exchange events (every action set in the game is referred to as an event), but some—the big circles—are where players interact in auctions in the form of negotiation or bidding events, and final category—the large triangles—are push-your-luck benefit vs risk events.
Aside from the boards, the main components are tactic cards and various resource tokens. The tactic cards show five different icons: gifts, persuasion, intrigue, tech, and the final one, charisma, acts as a wildcard which be used in place of any of the others. Some cards have a single icon, some have two identical ones, and some a credit icon as well as a tactics one, meaning that card can be used in place of a credit token. The available token types are credit (used to pay for a number of things during the game), success tokens (which provide the final score), alliance tokens (granted at various points in the game, providing a variety of credit or success tokens when used) and offence tokens (negative points accrued through offending aliens—normally by getting a penalty as a result of unfortunate risk taking).
The different events that players can encounter are:
· Prepare and compose events—reveal 1 or 2 cards per player, and players take turn in selecting them;
· Supply events—take the indicated tokens or draw cards;
· Option events—discard some cards to draw others, or convert combinations of tokens into those of other types;
· Risk events—in turn, each player draws the indicated number of tactic cards, hoping to match the indicated symbols; they keep any cards with matching symbols, but if some don’t match, they take a penalty, such as offence tokens. Except for the case when none at all match—this is deemed such a humiliating failure that the aliens are bewildered and unable to take offence!
· Negotiation events—here, the first player plays 1 or more cards showing one of the indicated symbols (or the charisma wildcard) to indicate the number to beat, and everyone takes turn to bump the number (it doesn’t matter if their cards have the same symbols as played before, just that all cards in one bid have the same symbol and must match those in the negotiation circle) or to pass; when everyone has passed, players get their choice of the rewards shown on the dial in reverse order of passing; one additional wrinkle is that each time someone wants to bid, they can optionally perform a risk-taking action (similar to risk events) to boost their chances in the negotiation; and
· Bidding events—similar to negotiations, except everyone reveals their bids simultaneously.
Each negotiation and bidding circle shows 5 segments indicating the potential rewards for players (one of which is always a bad option). When there are fewer than 5 players, some segments are covered up (the example above shows the 3-player situation), forcing someone to have to accept a penalty option.
Some of the negotiation and bidding rewards are ‘power cards’ which provide a range of immediate or deferred benefits.
With that out of the way, let’s play the game…
The super ship token starts in the first space on the Solar System board. On each turn, the ship moves to the next space—down and across the board, and then onto the first space on the next civilisation board when it reaches the end of the current one. Players take it in turn to perform whatever action that event entails, as described above. The Solar System board is a gentle introduction to the mechanics of the game, with a majority of low-risk, beneficial actions, while other boards can be less forgiving (such as the earlier mentioned Sinister System).
The Arrival board includes, among other things, option events to convert other types of tokens into success tokens—the only ones that count as the final score. The player with the highest success score wins.
For a longer game, you can add extension boards to some or all boards on the map; these include variations on negotiation and bidding events, e.g., using credits rather than tactic cards when making bids, as well as transmission events where you show what cards you have rather than dispose of them, as in normal trading events. Although not mentioned in the rules, I imagine that adding in the fourth civilisation board could also lengthen gameplay, and removing one could lead to a quicker game.
Expansion
As with ORBIT, EGO’s rulebook includes instructions for a separately purchased expansion. EGO: ID Expansion, which stands for Interstellar Disruptions (sigh), features 2 new game modules which can be included separately or together: Ships and Special Alliance.
In the first, randomly selected circular ship boards are placed between each pair of civilisation boards; as players travel through each of these on the way between star systems (hmm, the super ship travelling through other ships, or perhaps the way to think about them is the players’ ship encountering other ships on its voyage), they reveal cards in their hands to receive benefits or penalties. Some of the ships, ‘super ships,’ are generally positive in outcome while others, ‘hostile ships,’ tend towards being more punishing.
The Special Alliance Tokens Module, as the name might suggest, provides extra alliance tokens with different abilities than those in the base game: 4 of them allow players to remove an offence token, and 4 allow players to draw more tactic cards.
Impressions and Verdict
Auctions are pleasantly tense at higher player numbers, but they feel slightly off and distinctly unsatisfying with only 2 players—they all become strictly positive vs negative outcomes, rather than having a degree of rewards, so there’s little nuance in bidding.
A lot of luck is involved in the tactic card and alliance token draws, so the game can swing significantly; some players will find that rather frustrating.
Overall, I was somewhat disappointed by the game. After a couple of risk taking and negotiation actions, they all felt kind samey for the rest of the game, and it was a bit of a plod to get to the end, but at least the game is fairly quick. The size of the final scoring penalty for offence tokens seemed to swamp points gained elsewhere, making the game seem to be a race to get rid of as many of them as possible before it was too late.
I do like a lot of Knizia games, but I don’t think this one is for me.
Ratings
Overall score of 50/100.
Artwork: 3/5
Complexity: 3/5
Replayability: 4/5
Player interaction: 4/5
Component quality: 4/5
Likes
Easy to grasp
Fun competitive element
Dislikes
Looks overly complicated
While the random board selection does add variability, there’s a sameness about overall play
About the Author:
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
