Game Spotlight- The Stars are Right

I'm not a big fan of puzzle games, but showing up 20 minutes late to game night means that you're playing what is on the table. Fortunately, there was a spot open for me in "the Stars are Right." The best part of showing up late is that you don't have to sit through the rules explanations. Since I have the attention span of a humming bird on crack, that time is wasted on me. I plopped down and waited for divine inspiration to show me how to play. It turns out the game- is pretty simple but the -play is pretty hard.

The Stars are Right is a Steve Jackson game (I know- I can hear you cringing) about aligning the stars to summon Things_that_Man_was_ not_meant _to_know. I immediately  discovered it was a puzzle game. I hate puzzle games. I like Great Old Ones. I was doubtful that I'd like a puzzle game about Great Old Ones but I gritted my teeth and made a mental note to be the first one to show up next time. As I surveyed the cartoony Deep Ones in my hand and field of stars in the center of the table visions of my beloved heroclix setup and Thunder Road danced in my head.

In the "Stars are Right" players arrange the stars into specific configurations to summon monsters for points. The monsters you summon have powers that let you manipulate the stars and make it easy to summon similar monsters.

The stars are arranged in a 5 x 5 grid with a large icon in the center and a smaller icon showing you what star is on the back. The icons are usually opposite (ie. The full moon is opposite the new moon, the 4 star cluster is opposite the single star). You hold a hand of five cards consisting of servitors, lesser servants, greater servants and Great Old Ones. These cards are ‘summoned' (placed in front of you) by arranging the correct combination of stars on the board and are worth 0,1,2,4 points respectively.  On each card there are icons representing powers that let you flip a star, push a row, or swap two orthogonally adjacent stars. By discarding the card with the correct icons you can manipulate the field of stars.

The clever part of the game comes when you start summoning stuff. Each creature has a special power to alter or amplify the three types of manipulation. My "swap two tiles" becomes "Swap 2 tiles and flip 3 more" with the right combination of servants. Additionally, each servant is aligned with a specific Great Old One and can provide an element for that G.O.O. when you need to summon them (which is still incredibly difficult with everyone constantly shifting, flipping and swapping your carefully aligned configuration.) So the shooting star isn't in the right place? No problem- I use the Shooting star depicted on my Byakee. Using the powers of lesser servants to summon a G.O.O. destroys them though. That's the breaks when you're a lowly Byakee.  

The first person to summon 10 points of Monsters wins but you can only keep 6 summoned creatures in front of you so you're going to need at least one G.O.O.

Typical of these types of games, each player was staring at the board intently trying to figure out their next move. The silence was punctuated by loud groans, threats, and sobs of grief as the constantly evolving board screwed up everyone's plans. There is very little direct screwage but the G.O.O are aligned with opposite arrangements of stars so you end up undoing the other players machinations. Also the game gets pretty complex at the end when you have a wide combination of actions you can do to manipulate the board. In that matter the game reminded me of some of the other popular games where the mover you have, the more flexibility you acquire to make new things happen. Don't even think of trying this game with anyone prone to Analysis Paralysis or else you'll spend a good portion of the evening studying the ceiling walls and checking your phone for text messages. Our group went pretty quickly and there was plenty of chiding when some one started to stall out.

The bottom line: "The Stars are Right" is a clever puzzle game that ramps up toward the endgame and offers some real brain burning problems. Long term planning is limited to what types of creatures you plan to summon and a single turn can make you change your plans significantly. The evolving board is the best and worst part of the game.  Best because you constantly are faced with a new problem but worst because you only have moments to solve some very complicated problems. Last week I chided Drake for writing up a Eurogame. Oh how the worm has turned. I still hate puzzle games- but I almost like this one.

Stephen"DarkCultist"Avery