Moonrakers is a yahtzee style engine building game from IV studios. It combines quick and simple gameplay with high quality components and beautiful artwork. Turns combine dice rolling with pushing your luck as you pick which one card and one attribute to go after to try to get a cube out to earn sweet points. You will be both trying to collect points and gain cards for building your engine in the hopes those special abilities give you the edge.
Basic Gameplay
Moonrollers is a standalone game set in the Moonrakers universe. It uses the same symbology and artwork but is a much lighter and quicker game than its bigger brother. The box is also about 1/10 of the size too! During the game you are rolling dice to try and complete cards. If you contribute to a card then you gain points based on how much you contributed, if you are the person to complete a card then you gain it to go in front of you and now that special ability is yours too. As the game ramps up it becomes more of a strategy of when to take a card and when to try for max points! There are multiple strategies to gain a win; gain special abilities by getting cards and hope that your engine ramps up hard enough that you leave your opponents for dust, or quietly plug away for points and don’t grow your engine. The game end is determined by a player either getting one of each colour card in front of them or three of the same colour card.
Components
The artwork churned out by IV Studio is second to none in my opinion. Their graphic design team makes things that make my eyes sing with appreciation! The cards are little dark square cards with your striking moonrakers line art style artwork and your dice are simple chunky navy blue with clear symbols brightly coloured on them to give you a quick recognition of what you have rolled.
Replayability
This is a dice game and so the replayability will always be pretty high. This is also heightened by the fact that the market is always changing and your abilities and the order you get them in will also change in each game too.
Round Up
If you’re looking for a good looking quick paced dice chucker that has vibes of Yahtzee but with layers of strategy then I think Moonrollers could be for you! This has now been moved to my “play with everyone” shelf which are games I feel I could teach quickly to my non gaming friends.
