Roll for the Galaxy is a 2014 game designed by Wei-Hwa Huang and Thomas Lehmann, and published by Rio Grande Games
Roll for the Galaxy is a dice-based tableau-builder where 2 to 5 players compete to build a galactic empire. Dominate space through military might or a flashy ad-campaign, assuming your citizens are working the right jobs at the right time. May the best galactic ruler win!
Is it fun?
Elephant in the room: I’m going to talk about Race for the Galaxy a LOT in this review. If they existed independently in a vacuum we could have a different conversation about it, but I can’t help talking about one in terms of the other. And at the end of the day, if you put Race and Roll in front of me, I’m going to pick Race every time.
Don’t mistake me, this game IS fun. It’s just wildly overly complicated. Originally I’d been pretty indignant when Thom decried this as a less interesting reimplementation of Race for the Galaxy, but sadly I’ve been coming around.
That’s a big ol’ nope from me. The delight found in engine-building games (well, good ones; not this one) comes from making deliberate and informed additions to your engine, and seeing it grow from something humble to something mighty. In Roll FTG, however, your ability to make meaningful choices is critically entangled by randomness. The result is a very tedious and unfulfilling experience.
If you want to just roll some dice, go play Yahtzee.
Do the components/aesthetics improve the experience?
Don’t get me wrong, I love the space aesthetic in the X for the Galaxy games, and it’s totally delivered here, too. But where Race has So Many Cards, Roll has SO MANY DICE. And they’re fiddly to keep track of. More on that later. Overall, though, more than some other games, the components are in service to the mechanics moreso than the experience. If I were rolling dice down a Jeff Bezos style dice tower, maybe we could score higher in this category.
This game benefits greatly from its Race for the Galaxy inheritance, and while rolling a handful of colorful dice sounds delightful,in practice your pod is often fairly small and/or mostly white.
Does playing the game create an immersive experience?
Gotta give them credit: there’s a lot of rolling in this galaxy, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Because of the limits here on artwork and mechanics of the individual upgrade tokens, there doesn’t feel like as much space to communicate the theme as in Race. Which is a real pity.
I guess…a bit. There are cracks in the theme here wide enough to drive a bus through, but some sort of story does gradually emerge in your tableau. Workers do a space-y 4x job, you colonize some planets and build some developments, and eventually–thankfully–the game ends and you share a look of misery with your friends as you all lock this game in an old steamer trunk and bury it in the woods. Or something…
How often does a player make meaningful choices?
Credit where credit is due, Roll for the Galaxy has the hallmarks of a good worker placement game. If you feel like every decision you’ve made has been a terrible one, you know you’re making meaningful choices. I think. I have to test that theory out a little more, but I’m pretty sure the logic is sound, and it applies here.
I’m really reluctant to give this game any credit here, as it is very encumbered by randomness. That being said, I am so far undefeated at this game against Josh because I was able to exert some small amount of my will over the game. It is very random though–you can mitigate the dice alright, but you are pretty limited by what tiles you draw
Does the level of player interaction encourage continual engagement?
No. In fact, the level of interaction feels even less than in Race, which is already a very solo experience. You need to pay attention to your opponents to see if they’re producing/consuming so you can try to end the game more quickly, just like in Race for the galaxy. Simultaneous turns to the rescue once again.
Zero interaction. In theory you can look at your opponents’ tableaus and try to guess what phases they will pick, but that really only matters if your dice rolled some options for you to choose from. This game is competitive solitaire, and I find myself just wanting to walk away from it.
Is the game balanced such that it feels like a fair experience?
So much of the game is randomized and solo-ized that it doesn’t feel like it could be anything but fair. As in Race, there are no snowball or catch-up mechanics; you’re on your own, but that’s freeing as it can be limiting.
Everyone is shackled by the same tyrannical chance, which is somewhat balancing in of itself. By the same token, however, it means one person’s good luck can dramatically skew things in their favor.
How often would you want to play this game?
Just thinking about pulling this one off the shelf makes me tired. Never. I’d never play it unless someone specifically asked to play it. I’d never suggest it. I’d never own it.
I would like to never play this game again, please and thank you.
Is the game accessible?
I gave Race a big fat zero-points on this one, and Roll doesn’t do any better. There are dice, the dice have colors, and the dice also have symbols. They’re slightly frustrating to micromanage, and that’s fine — the micromanagement part is only a sliver of the accessibility experience — but this is another game that’s not going to appeal to a wide audience.
I can’t see being able to teach this to anybody that was even remotely on the fence about learning a new game. But, you know, there are no words to read. BGG rates it slightly less “weighty” than Race, but I’d argue that the worker management mechanics should give Roll the edge in complexity.
Cards as a resource are way easier to understand and manage than the dice are here. I’ve taught an eager ten year old how to play Race, and he got it after a game or two. I’ve played Roll with competent game-playing adults who still don’t get it, and I’m not even convinced it’s their fault.
A thousand times no. This game has a lot of iconography to wrap your head around, compounded by fairly bewildering rules. Add to that the counterintuitive mechanics around assigning workers, and this game feels about as accessible as a brick wall. This might be the only game less accessible than Race for the Galaxy.
You couldn’t pay me to teach you this game…well, if you really have your heart set on doing so, we can talk–but it won’t be cheap!
Is the game good value?
For how much it costs (seven years on), and how often it’d hit my table (I don’t own this one, and I don’t plan on buying it), I can’t rate it highly. Thom mentions it could never be sold cheaply enough to be worth buying, but at some point you could take it on for the components alone. After all, Thom is a man who bought Roman Taxi.
I don’t think this game could be sold cheap enough to ever be worth buying.
Je ne sais quoi?
In my estimation it’s a novelty reserved for fans of the original, and only for a time. I’m sure there are people who like it more than the card game, and there’s something to be said for the visceral nature of rolling and moving dice around. There’s still a spark of that Race for the Galaxy charm, but it fizzles a bit for me.
Almost everything positive about this game(and that’s not a lot) was lifted from Race FTG. Which brings me to the question of “why does this game even exist?” It is just a worse, more confusing version of Race FTG, and I would always rather play that.
Final Thoughts
Roll for the Galaxy is at its best with 3-4 players, but will suit 2-5, and runs around 45 minutes. Less if you’ve gotten a couple games under your belt or are only working with a couple of players. Race for the Galaxy is honestly one of my favorite games. Roll for the Galaxy, by contrast, may have worn out its welcome. It’s an okay engine builder in a world of good engine builders. If you really liked the aesthetic of Race for the Galaxy and don’t mind putting up with the game’s shorthand for a similar experience that just happens to use dice, this game could fill a spot in your collection.
Final Scores