Excursions by Kinson Key Games: Galactic Cruise’s New Board Game on Kickstarter
🚀 Excursions | 🏢 Publisher Kinson Key Games
👽 Designer: Ben Rosset | 🎨 Artist: Ian O'Toole
🧑🏼🚀 1-6 players | ⏳ ~60 minutes | 🌠 Crunchy euro, simultaneous play
If you’ve ever looked at Galactic Cruise and thought about the price, the size of the box, or how long it’s going to take to play, you are not alone. But if you’ve played it, you also know why it earned all of that table space. You’re building and upgrading cruise ships, recruiting guests, collecting the resources you need to get them into space, and trying to make all of those pieces work together. There’s a lot going on, but when (and if) your plan finally clicks and you get that cruise launched, it truly feels like you should be the next CEO
Galactic Cruise is a big, crunchy euro, and that’s part of what makes it so much fun. You have a lot of moving pieces to keep track of, but when they all come together, it's indescribable. I love a pretty game, good instructions, and good heavy euro. I think this is the only one that checks all three boxes at once. The problem is that I don’t play solo, and my wife and friends don’t always want to sign up for a long term relationship with a board game
Sooooo, when I heard that Excursions was bringing the Galactic Cruise universe to a game that plays 1 to 6 players, uses simultaneous actions, and cuts the playtime down to around an hour, I was immediately interested. Then I saw it. Same gorgeous retro space aesthetic, fantastic iconography, and the same attention to detail in the graphic design and player aids. Then we played the prototype, four times in a row. That took about the same as one two player game of Galactic Cruise 🤣
I can say that the production is just as impressive as I hoped it would be. I may be a little biased here because I already love Galactic Cruise, but Excursions is a game I’m genuinely excited to see through. It takes something I already know I like and asks a pretty important question: What if I could actually get it to the table on a weeknight?
How It Plays
Have you ever wanted to work in tourism? How about in space? Well, this is your chance. You’ll build ships, take on passengers, gather the resources you need to send those ships into space, visit destinations, upgrade your operation, and try to turn all of that into points before someone else gets to 50 first
The interesting part is that everyone is making those decisions at the same time. There’s a central rotating wheel with seven different actions around it. On your turn, you choose an action, but the other players don’t have to sit around waiting for you to finish. They can take that same action too, or use adjacent spaces if they’ve developed the right parts of their player board. And if the action you really wanted doesn’t make sense for you right now, there’s a center space where you can pick up a basic resource or card and keep moving.
So while there’s plenty to think about, you’re rarely sitting there twiddling your thumbs waiting for X person to hurry up
Build Your Space Tourism Empire
This is where the heavier euro side of Excursions starts to show up. You have ships to build, passengers to manage, resources to collect, destinations to visit, and upgrades to unlock. There are multiple ways to score points, and naturally, my first instinct was to try to do all of them. That was a mistake! Excursions is a race, so you don’t have unlimited time to build the perfect machine. You need to decide where you want to focus and make those choices actually work together. You can build larger ships and send them on longer trips, or you can focus on smaller ships making shorter trips and build an engine around getting them back into space quickly. Both approaches work. Trying to do both while also grabbing every upgrade is where things start getting ugly. The game rewards having a plan, but it also rewards noticing when someone else is getting too far ahead
The Rotating Wheel
The rotating wheel is one of my favorite things about the game because it isn’t just there to make the board look cool. It controls when your ships move. As the wheel rotates, certain spaces trigger movement, and every ship currently out in space advances when that happens. That means you can plan around it. You can see when the next movement opportunity is coming, which lets you decide whether you should launch your ship now, gather more fuel first, or wait for the next rotation. But this is where Excursions can get a little evil, in the best way. You start plotting. Well, if I go there, that’s going to benefit them. But if I go here, I can do all of these things AND prevent so-and-so from launching. And suddenly you’re not just figuring out how to improve your own space tourism empire. You’re figuring out how to make everyone else’s life a little harder. Of course, this is only fun when I’m the one doing it. When someone else does it to me? Rude!
Because everyone can see the wheel, you have all the information you need to make those decisions. You know what’s coming, you can see what everyone else is trying to do, and you get to decide whether you’re going to focus on your own plan or make someone else’s plan a little more difficult
Excursions starting components Excursions board and central table that rotates Galactic Cruise Excursions cards and components during gameplay
Who’s This Game For?
I think Excursions is going to appeal to people who like having a lot of decisions to make without spending their entire evening making them. You don’t need to have played Galactic Cruise to enjoy it. If anything, I think the simultaneous turns make it a pretty interesting entry point into this universe because you get a lot of the strategic puzzle without the same time commitment. It also works for a bigger group. At up to six players, everyone can be involved without the game turning into a parade of “Okay, now it’s your turn”
If you already own Galactic Cruise, I don’t think Excursions makes it redundant. For me, they fill different spots. Galactic Cruise is the game I want when I’m ready for the full heavy euro experience. And . . . Let’s talk about my favorite game for a second: Jump Drive. Race for the Galaxy and Jump Drive scratch a similar itch, but I reach for Jump Drive when I want that experience without committing quite as much time. That’s how I’m looking at Excursions next to Galactic Cruise. I don’t necessarily want one instead of the other. I want to be able to pick the one that fits the time, space, and mood. And yes, any excuse to talk about Jump Drive 🥰
Pros
🎨 Same fantastic art and graphic design as Galactic Cruise
🔄 The rotating wheel creates interesting timing decisions
👽 The components and production are top notch
🧩 Simultaneous play keeps everyone involved
🎲 Fantastic iconography and player aids
🚀 A lot of strategy in a decent footprint
👩🏻🚀 Scales well and plays up to 6 players
⏱️ Much easier to fit into a weeknight
🗺️ Multiple paths to victory
Considerations
🧩 If you are comparing to Galactic Cruise, Excursions still has a lot to keep track of
❤️ If you’re expecting Galactic Cruise in a smaller box, this is its own game
🏎️ The race means you need to pay attention to what everyone else is doing
🚀 Trying to pursue everything at once can drain your resources
⛔️ If you want a super lightweight game, this isn’t it
Bottom Line
Excursions is exactly the kind of game I was hoping it would be. I received a prototype copy to preview, and as always, my opinions are my own. This is a preview of the prototype, so some things may change before the final game is released. I may be a little biased because I already love Galactic Cruise, but I’ve now played Excursions nine times, and I’m genuinely excited to see where this one goes. It has the pretty production, clear iconography, and strategic decisions that made me fall in love with Galactic Cruise, but it gives me a way to get that feeling to the table without needing to plan my entire evening around it. I don’t need Excursions to replace Galactic Cruise. I want both. I want Galactic Cruise when I’m ready for the full heavy euro experience, and Excursions when I want to build spaceships, send people into space, make questionable decisions on the rotating wheel, and still have time to do something afterward. Can it be delivery time already? I can’t wait to play the final copy. Check out the Kickstarter!
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