Ravensburger Lunar Outpost Board Game for Ages 10 and Up – Work Together to Build a Base on The Moon

Just got this in the mail today and had some people over to play it and had a great time the game has replay value and the production is really good

This game has an option to play on Alexa which I did NOT use for this review, please keep that in mind. Lunar Outpost is a space themed game that takes place on the moon vs. the many games that seem to take place on Mars. It is a cooperative game with pretty good components and a high replayability factor which is a plus. It is a cooperative game that is more complex than some other mass market cooperative games like the Horrified or Aliens games, while not being too difficult to learn, teach or play. So it is by no means a heavy game, but it has more too it than the very popular Horrified games, which are great too. The game comes with a very good training mission to learn how to play the game on a more basic set up. There are a lot of options for set up, so the game has a lot of replayability based on what parts of the lunar base you use each time, the different options on the events cards, and which astronauts the players choose to be so the game has some legs. The directions are pretty easy to follow but some of the cards can be a little vague. Many modern board games are very expensive, so I feel the components and the amount of game you are getting here form MSRP of 35$ is pretty good. I like how you roll to see how the random events card may or may not effect your game. For a mass market lighter cooperative game, I think it is a good choice and I did not know anything about this game and was pleasantly surprised. My biggest issue with the game is the colors used and some of the issues that may come up for colorblind players. I had a difficult time telling the various moon resources apart and some issues reading the levels on the astronauts cards. I think if you are colorblind this game may be difficult for you. Other than the color issue it is a pretty good game that is very logical to learn and play and has plenty of content to change up your game each time. My son gets very competitive when playing games, so I liked that this game made him have to work together. Horrified and the Aliens games are very similar in my opinion, good games but very much alike, this was a good entry level cooperative which played differently and in that respect was a bit of fresh air. I wish the color choices had been better.

I really liked this game. It was challenging and took planning to make sure you maintained enough life support to keep a round going. There is chance and skill involved in this cooperative game. The chance is in the roll of the dice on the Event cards to see if any good or negative is going to happen to your team of moon explorers. The skill is the planning of life support and allocating of resources to add modules to your moon base. The challenge is to complete the moon base within the set number of rounds while navigating the chance and skill elements and working as a team.This is a well thought out game. The overall game mechanics work really well. The only thing that I would add is a card for each player of a summary of their actions to take. Once you get the procedure for play, it is not difficult. It would be nice to have a quick reference card of the possible actions. This would be especially helpful for newer players, otherwise they keep asking what the actions are that they can do.The game pieces are made very well and have a quality look and feel to them. The module and base station cards are thick and sturdy. The resource elements are colorful and have interesting shape.I watched a couple of YouTube how it is played videos. They were only minimally helpful. The instructions were pretty good. But they made the process to play seem more difficult than it is. I did have difficulty understanding one of the crew member cards and understanding if moon dust was an actual resource or not.I initially tried the Alexa app thinking that this would walk us slowly through getting started playing. I quickly got lost and confused with what Alexa was telling us. I might try Alexa again now that I understand the game process, but I wouldn't recommend it for new players. Perhaps if there were a way to repeat the instructions that Alexa just gave.I have only played with two players. I look forward to seeing how it will do with more players. Being a cooperative game, means the more people makes cooperation more challenging. This is a game with great replayability.