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In this expandable card game, players use pre-constructed and highly-thematic decks representing crew among unique starships, illustrated through gorgeous art by Norwegian artist Raymond Heggheim There were three primary pillars of development for Astra during the design process:
•Embracing a unique, interactive game system and departing from standard attack/defense mechanics.
As passionate and active card gamers ourselves, the two founding members of Paper Planet Games have played countless card games at a competitive level. We noticed parts of each of these games that we loved and wished there was a way to mix it all together. That's where Astra: Vestiges of Deep Space came in. What we came up with was FTL meets Magic: The Gathering. We left behind the idea of attack points and health values and, inspired by Android: Netrunner, imagined something entirely different. Instead, players manage the actions of the Crew Members on their starship while equipping their vessels with powerful weapons to take down the opposing crews.
We also loved the fast, single-turn action from Ashes: Reborn, as well as the expandable nature of Summoner Wars. We took our favorite aspects from the games we love and implemented them with our own unique system, creating Astra: Vestiges of Deep Space.
•No Tokens.
We wanted to design a game that can be easily put in a jacket or backpack pocket. Whether you're two friends at a lunch table on a field trip or a couple playing at the gate of an airport, Astra was going to be a travel-friendly game. Once we settled on the idea of abandoning health points and attack values, we knew there was design space to abandon tokens altogether. Cards, after all, are double-sided, which ended up being the key to our main currency and health system. Crew Members have a Wounded and Healthy side, while rooms of your starship have an Online and Offline side. Players will win or lose by their ability to manage the status of their Crew Members and rooms.
•No Deckbuilding.
While deck-building has great reason of being among the fondest card game mechanics, we took the theme and storytelling of Astra too seriously to add deck-building to the mix. We want each faction of Astra to feel unique, with their own goals and their own play style. Additionally, by eliminating deck building, we knew that balancing the game and expanding the game would be significantly easier at the size of our operation. What resulted is a more narratively focused and fine-tuned strategy game.
