Vesta (2025)

It is the year 2049 and mankind has reached the point where space travel to the moon and Mars is commonplace. The next frontier is the asteroid belt. Enter Vesta, one of the largest asteroids in the main asteroid belt, and surveys show it is loaded with Helium-3 (valuable as fuel for the latest fusion reactors) and various valuable rare-earth minerals. So, like the 1849 California gold rush, the rush is on to mine these valuable resources from Vesta. Vesta is a cooperative game where players will work together to mine resources from one of several available mines and use them to build their base, use in their fusion reactors, or sell. The mines consist of layers of tiles representing five different types of resources. Players mine these minerals by removing pairs of matching tiles, except when using mining tools that allow them to break the normal mining rules. Then regolith, rock, or metals are used to build up their bases and Helium-3 is used in your reactors for energy. Building bases involves stacking tiles from the mine. Each type of material has special rules for how they can be stacked or flipped in your base. But watch out because there are asteroid pirates hidden in the mine who also want the valuable minerals, and they will attack you and cause damage to your base when revealed. You can fight them off if you spend some of your earnings on weapons or force fields. Players also get to play as characters who each have special abilities such as Gunther Hammer a mining specialist or Biff Parsec, a Space Ranger who is very handy at fighting off pirates. To win, the players must build ten fusion reactors. The players will lose if the mine becomes depleted or locked up where the players don't have the mining tools to break things loose. The players can also lose if they build their base poorly and can't build anymore or if the pirates do too much damage to their bases. -description from designer