First Impressions – Galactic Cruise

This is another “first impressions” post about a new game, a game that I’m not sure I will get three plays of but yet one I want to talk about.

As I said in my Friday Night Shots post about first impressions, this is not going to be a review.

I’ve only played it once!

And I’m in the middle of three asynchronous games on Boardgame Arena.

But I certainly haven’t played it enough to review.

So please keep that in mind.

Galactic Cruise is a game about space tourists and catering to their every whim (kind of, in an abstract kind of way).

It was designed by T.K. King, Dennis Northcott, Koltin Thompson with artwork by the incredible Ian O’Toole. It was published by Kinson Key Games in 2025.

This feels a lot like a Vital Lacerda game and, considering that I’ve heard that the designers were inspired by his games, that’s a good thing!

This game has intrigued me for quite a while so I was glad to finally get it to the table this past weekend.

It’s now in Alpha status on Boardgame Arena and, seeing that, I started a couple games of it and was kind of lost.

The Heavy Cardboard playthrough and teach really helped me get a handle on it, though, and playing it on the table doubled that.

Apparently Paul Grogan’s teach video is also really helpful.

After all of this anticipation, was it worth it?

Oh yeah, at least with my first physical play of the game.

Yes, in a way, Galactic Cruise is standard Lacerda-esque worker placement, where you are never truly blocked from placing a worker on an action because you just bump the worker that’s in the way.

Often in Lacerda games, this gives the bumped player an action as compensation for being bumped, but in this case it just gives you a funding bonus that you would have received anyway if you had to recall your worker yourself.

It just saves you a bit of time.

In Galactic Cruise, you are going to be building spaceships, selling cruises and trying to attract customers to the cruise you are hyping at the time.

You are also building developments to give you more action possibilities as well as technologies that will make some things easier (or cheaper).

Also, Agenda cards give you some game-breaking abilities as a one-time bonus that are just amazing!

Or you can discard them for resources, which seems bad but when you need oxygen to breathe, you need oxygen to breathe.

The action system in Galactic Cruise is really interesting and one of the highlights of the game.

When you have “developments” in a space (and you start with one), that allows you to link actions.

First, the worker spaces actually have two actions available to them (as shown above). These can be randomized or you can use the other side of the board and have “related” actions in the same space.

However, when you have a development in a space between two worker spaces, you can choose the two adjacent actions as what you want to do as well!

So above, the blue worker could choose any one of six actions (because they have a development on both sides of the worker space).

You get two actions a turn so, as with many worker placement games, this is a game of action efficiency.

You even get the opportunity to use different actions if you don’t have a development there but somebody else does.

You just have to pay them for the privilege. Unless you have a ton of reputation, in which case everybody loves you so much that they’ll willingly help you for no additional cost.

The Agenda cards are another cool aspect of Galactic Cruise, not only offering some game-breaking abilities, but also an interesting way to gain resources and reputation (which can be very important).

You can collect up to 5 Agenda cards before having to use one/discard one, and you can gain them through an action.

However, Agenda cards don’t refill when you take them.

Instead, there is an action required to “refill” the Agenda card row.

Whichever spaces are currently empty will give you a bonus when you do so, either an ad, or a resource, or a money, etc.

This wipes the row of the remaining cards and refills it completely.

There’s even an Agenda card that lets you take one of the remaining cards and then do this, getting all of the bonuses you are entitled to.

Win/win!

The most important part of the game, of course, is acquiring spaceships and then sending them on a cruise with people of the right temperament.

Acquiring spaceships will get you an instant bonus with the engine (bottom piece) that you take, and also the cockpit (top piece) paired with it will give you points when you launch it and at the end of the game.

Of course, your ships can’t hold passengers without some segments being added, and that’s another action that costs money.

Ships can have at most 3 segments in them (or 4 if you have the upgrade). Three segments will allow two passengers.

These are exclusive cruises!

Of course you also have to schedule a cruise and spend ads to attract the customers that you want.

Or, if you don’t want the bonuses that pre-booking customers will give you, you can wait until you launch and bring in some last-minute looky-loos.

Sending ships on their voyages is the main way that you’ll be getting points because, depending on the cruise you choose, coloured destination areas will get you points if you spend ads on them.

Even “floating in space” will get you a bunch of stuff depending on the colour of your passengers and the icons on your ship.

Matching the passengers with the destination makes it cheaper to thrill them when you get there (because you’re actually doing what they want you to do anyway) but even Adventurous passengers can find family-friendly Space Las Vegas attractive if you advertise enough.

I think one thing I really like about Galactic Cruise is a nod back to Lacerda.

One of the things said about Lacerda games is that the strategies are very complex but what you do is actually easy: you place a worker, you do the thing.

Galactic Cruise takes that a bit further, in that you place a worker and do two things.

The developments connecting the actions give this decision even more gravitas, because you’re not just choosing between the actions where you placed your worker.

If you’re connected, you can do one of those actions instead.

As you get developments out, your choices become even broader.

Of course, you also want developments out on technologies so that you can take advantage of them.

Having the launching of a ship require one fewer food or fuel or oxygen is really helpful.

Not to mention potential discounts on building ship segments, and even cooler technologies.

The technologies are all useful, but putting developments out to take advantage of them is so expensive!

But it will give you points if you get a full column of developments out.

Getting developments out will also free up space for more resources, so yet another reason to do them.

That’s the wonderful part of Galactic Cruise. Everything is so attractive but you have to tailor your actions to do the best thing for you.

I had a ship that got me points for expert employees (one of the actions is to hire an expert employee, but they can be quite expensive until you start putting out some developments or flipping upgrade tiles).

That pointed me to making sure I hired both of them!

So the ships you get can help guide you, but some actions you just want to do because they will help you do everything else.

As you send your ships out into space, you will be adding upgrade tokens to one of the three passenger type areas on your player board, and these upgrades will become very useful.

The particular one above makes it so that every time you gain reputation, you also gain the benefits of the spaces you pass. Could be money, resources, ads, or whatever.

That’s very useful! If you’re going to start gaining reputation, like I suddenly wanted to do.

There are so many great choices and you will never be able to do everything.

If you’re a gamer who has trouble focusing on one coherent path to victory, Galactic Cruise may not be for you.

The other thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want to collect ships willy-nilly, because if you never launch a ship, you will lose 5 points!

These ships are made to be launched, so be careful about that.

Galactic Cruise is a brain-burner just like some of the best Lacerda games.

I’m entranced by this game, even more so after having played it on the table.

I’m currently in three asynchronous games on Boardgame Arena and enjoying every minute of them!

Though they’re complex enough that I have to make a note on each game of what I want to do next.

Will it become a “samey” game where you are pretty much doing everything the same each game, harming replayability?

There is a danger of that, though the different ships, different segments, different cruises, as well as the different expert employee abilities, does imply that there should be enough differences to focus on a different path to victory each time.

After only one play, I can’t really comment on that, hence the “first impressions” rather than “review” post.

Overall, though, I can’t wait to play this one again and I will enjoy my BGA games in the meantime.

For now, Galactic Cruise is a winner that I will happily play as much as I can.

Warning, though.

The teach can be quite long as there is a lot of stuff to make sure people know.

It’s nothing to seasoned gamers who love these types of games anyway, though it is still long.

That being said, our first 3-player game took just over 2 hours, so it’s not that long once you get going.

I think it might be a bit long at 4-players, though.

Asynchronously on BGA, that’s not an issue!

If I do end up playing this a few more times, I’ll come back and say whether or not I still agree with what I’m typing here, but for now, Galactic Cruise is a winner.

There’s a big Kickstarter going on right now (for 15 more days unless you’re reading this in the future) for the Achievements expansion and the reprint of the game, though it’s not supposed to fulfill until October 2026 and hopefully a reprint of the base game will happen before then.

But maybe not!

You might want to get in on the Kickstarter if this sounds interesting to you.

Either way, if you have any interest in heavy action-selection games, this is one you should at least try.