By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: finished all the 2-player co-op scenarios in various difficulties

We like space-themed board games. The last one we played together was Galaxy Trucker, which was fun, but we prefer playing co-op if it’s just the two of us. There are some space-themed cooperative board games in the market, but many of them are either what we consider questionable, have some mechanics we don’t really like, or are not available in Germany. Voidfall caught our attention for not having any of those things, but one thing that delayed us from purchasing it was that it is a 120-Euro Eurogame (as of this writing) that was initially designed as competitive.

The question whether we would enjoy it cooperatively was a huge one, since neither of us had played something like Voidfall. We read the rulebook, more specifically the co-op section of the rulebook, and both of us were convinced by what we had read. Still a bit anxious, we eventually decided to bid goodbye to 120 € and brave the Voidfall universe.

The Setup, the books, and the works

At first glance, Voidfall can seem like just another generic ‘space’ themed game, albeit with some gorgeous artwork. However, a closer look shows that this isn’t really the case. The game comes with three books: rulebook, compendium and glossary, as well as a four page guide to the iconography. All of these are well made and do a good job of fulfilling their respective roles.

In addition to the setup instructions for all of the scenarios, the compendium contains quite a bit of text describing the setting. We could see that a lot of thought has gone into writing the setting in such a way as to both explain the differences between the competitive and the co-op/solo modes and to avoid some controversial narratives sometimes found in ‘space’ games. The different houses available to play also have some nice bits of flavor text that generally tie in well with their mechanics and possible starting technologies. We like that, even though it’s a heavy eurogame, the setting was still given enough attention.

The explanation of rules in the rulebook is generally clear and the structure is really good, but there is one case where a clearer explanation might have been more helpful, as there is a possibility that what the authors consider as intuitive may not be intuitive for others. The question is whether cards get discarded after getting played. This is not explicitly mentioned in the rules. In many rulebooks that we’ve read, the authors make it clear whether cards that were played should be discarded or not. When we encounter an explanation that isn’t clear, we often times read the subsequent steps in order to see what makes sense, which we did here.

Another thing that may not be so intuitive to some is the iconography for the combat. Some people may find the symbol for the salvo step confusing as it is represented as a round icon, regardless of whether it represents damage or shields. Seeing the round icon one might think that it refers to a shield bonus, but it’s the red or blue color that tells you which it is. Same goes for the approach step where it uses the arrow/triangular shape for both damage and shields. But the rest of the icons were very inuitive and easy for us to remember.

The glossary contains a detailed description of all the cards, sector tiles, and house mats in the game. We thought that after our first few games we wouldn’t need it much. We were wrong. While the iconography of the components is mostly clear, we still found it helpful to be able to check how each card works exactly, even as we gained more experience. This is also because there are plenty of different components, only some of which you’re going to see in a given scenario.

The competitive tutorial

For the tutorial, we had to play competitively, which was supposed to be easier than the co-op mode. In order to finish it, each of us had to get at least 120 Influence points. Influence points are gained by taking a sector, gaining improved technologies (also by gaining basic technologies but not all the time), or by fulfilling Agenda objectives among other ways. Powerful houses, be it economomically or militaristically, have high Inflence points. The more powerful and influential your house is, the more likely you are to have the highest score (or beat the score of the Voidborn in the cooperative mode).

We love that there are different houses to choose from in Voidfall. Each house has a complexity level. The complexity of a house is based on how much of the game mechanisms you have to take into account in order to use them effectively. But for the tutorial, it is recommended to use one of the basic houses, all of which have the same set of Civilization tracks and doesn’t have special Focus cards. But, like other more complex houses, each basic house has its own choice of two starting technologies. What one might not like about the basic houses is… they’re basic. As mentioned, they do not have special Focus cards, which make them less interesting to play in more complex scenarios. More on Focus cards later.

We were able to succeed in the tutorial, but it took a long time before we were able to finish it, as we were learning the rules. There was no combat that happened between the two of us, but we were excited to move on to the co-op mode of the game.

The co-op mode

In the co-op mode, instead of facing off against each other to become the new ruler of the empire while mopping up the remaining Voidborn presence, houses don’t (and cannot mechanically) invade each other and instead work together during the height of the Voidborn invasion to stop this threat to human existence. The Voidborn is the one responsible for corrupting citizens, the agendas of a house, and its Civilization tracks to lead to their ultimate demise. How the Voidborn came to be, we do not know. One theory that we have is that it existed the same time as the universe itself came to be.

While houses still accumulate individual Influence just like in the competitive mode, in order to win, every house needs to score higher than the Voidborn, whose Influence points are determined by the presence of Corruption, how many citizens are corrupted in Voidborn sectors, the presence of corrupted leaders called Harbingers in a Voidborn sector, the open Rifts, technologies it consumed, how much Catastrophe there is, the number of “unsaved” Fallen Houses (Houses completely corrupted by the Voidborn), and the lack of Safe Havens. That’s a lot of Corruption to prevent and deal with on top of the Voidborn having base Influence points ranging from 65-140, depending on difficulty. Each house only has 10 base influence points at the beginning. We have to add that we think some houses are less suitable for cooperative mode than others.

Same as in the competitive mode, in the begining of a game, each house has a home sector, which cannot be invaded, and another sector that can be. A sector represents a planet, where every citizen of the planet is united by being residents of the planet (a bit like Star Trek). Each sector shows the population and the Guilds they belong to (if there’s any). Guilds are responsible for the type of resources that can be produced. The amount of resources that a Guild can produce is determined by the size of the population.

A Crisis board is added on the cooperative setup where each player has to resolve a Crisis or be at war with the Voidborn on each turn.

There are three cycles in every game regardless of whether it’s competitive or solo/co-op mode. For each cycle, there are between four and six rounds indicated by a randomly drawn event card. These events further modify the board state in various positive or negative ways, such as adding rewards and/or enemy fleets to some sectors. They are nice, because they mean that even when we repeated a scenario, each playthrough was different. Each of them has two additional goals to choose from that give rewards if you can reach them by the end of the cycle. Early on these are things like Guilds and resources, while the event for the third cycle always rewards Influence points. Some event cards are only available in the co-op mode.

After resolving the event card, players start taking turns, one turn per round. On their turn they first have to draw a Crisis card if there’s no war in that round. A Crisis card is a form of attack from the Voidborn, where in order to resolve it and prevent it from staying on the board, the player has to do a specific sequence of actions that are detrimental to their house. If a player cannot resolve it, they could either put it on the Crisis board to let another player resolve it, pay the penalty, or take a Catastrophe token. Having plenty of Crises on the board is bad as it results in the Voidborn getting stronger during wars and when it attacks at the end of the cycle.

After drawing a Crisis card, the players can select a Focus card from their hand. These are mostly the same for each player, although the more complex houses have one or two special Focus cards that replace the more basic version.

Additionally, in co-op there is an offering of three Joint Focus cards, which have some co-op specific effects and allow players to share some of their actions. In any case, Focus cards have three actions printed on them of which players have to select two to resolve on their turn, unless they have a Trade token, which allows them to take all three actions. Some actions may allow a player to increase the population of one of their sectors, invade a Voidborn sector (you cannot invade another player in co-op), establish a Guild, and produce resources, among other things.

We really like the way this works in practice, as it means that there are plenty of interesting decisions. We wanted to do more almost all the time, which made it very tricky to decide on a card to pick. Often there was some goal we wanted to reach that required a multi-turn sequence of plays from each of us. A significant part of our playtime was spent planning these together. Pulling them off and achieving our goal was extremely satisfying when it happened.

Tall and Wide

Another important aspect of the decision making is the gaining and playing of the Agenda cards. These can be gained in various ways and can then be played in combination with specific Focus cards. When played they provide an additional action based on their category. More importantly, they can be scored at the end of each cycle, which is one of the main sources of Influence. We like that each of them has unique scoring conditions that can majorly influence your playstyle.

Speaking of playstyle, in Voidfall it’s possible to play either tall or wide. Playing tall entails developing your sectors by adding Guilds and increasing their population. Playing wide has more of a focus on acquiring more sectors and spreading out. We have found that in 2-player co-op it’s a good strategy for one of us to play tall and the other to play wide. As mentioned, in the cooperative mode each player has to score higher than the Voidborn and two of the major ways the Voidborn scores are Rifts and unfinished Safe Havens. We find that closing Rifts requires a wide play style, as you need to conquer your way there, whereas finishing Safe Havens is much easier to achieve when playing tall.

The co-op way

In easy difficulty of co-op mode, interaction between us wasn’t as needed as it was in the higher difficulty and more complex scenarios. We just did our own thing without much talk about what we’re planning to do aside from stating that we will deploy a fleet, build a Safe Haven, close the Rift, play a Joint Focus card, or get a specific technology, and pretty much said “ok” most of the time without thinking much about it.

It could also get anticlimactic when we noticed that the Voidborn cannot gain more Influence points than each of us had. Whenever that happened, we turned our focus toward gaining more points and becoming corrupted by our own greed, and in a way, competing against each other as to who gets the higher Influence points. That’s what the Voidborn wants, but what can it do when it has less points than us. We were turning into the very thing that we were fighting in the first place.

But in higher difficulties and more complex scenarios, there was a huge adjustment in terms of how we cooperate. Aside from the complex scenarios forcing us to adapt and testing our playstyle individually, us being greedy and too selfish could lead to losing against the Voidborn, which of course makes sense thematically.

While we do play plenty of cooperative games of varying complexities and types, we had never cooperated in quite such a way as we did in high difficulty and complex scenarios of Voidfall. On top of preventing the Voidborn from gaining more points, we also had to ensure that each of us gets to score enough points to defeat the Voidborn. We also discussed more as to who gets to solve a Crisis, and when to solve the Crisis before the next war comes. We had to choose which one should play a specific Joint Focus card and who gets which action.

And since we cannot co-exist in one sector, we had to make sure that whichever house gets the sector would strategically benefit the team, and same goes with choosing technologies as there are less technologies available in the 2-player setup.

There are other small things that we had never considered in earlier scenarios, such as who gets which reward from completing a Safe Haven; for instance, giving the option to deploy a fleet to the other player rather than to yourself might be better for the group. We like that it tested how well we cooperate and communicate. And we think that the cooperation itself added a layer of complexity to the game.

That said, despite being in temporary truce, there is no treaty between houses in co-op mode. We couldn’t just move our fleets through each other’s sectors. We do not like this part, but we understand that it would probably make the game easier if the houses have treaties even in times where we look out for and help each other out. Where’s the freedom of movement here? Fine.

The combat system

Despite the co-op mode having more elements of randomness (the type which forces you to adapt), the combat system remains fully deterministic. Although randomness in combat can sometimes be interesting depending on how it works and how it’s implemented in a system, we like the level of satisfaction that we get from being able to know whether the number of fleets and the type of ships that we have are enough to successfully invade or defend a sector.

We also like the technologies and the different types of ships. But we think that despite the co-op mode being more complex than the competitive one as a whole, the combat system in competitive mode can be more complex because the Voidborn can only have Corvettes (the basic ship that everyone can have). Whereas in competitive mode, it can get spicy if you want to invade an opponent who has an advanced ship with some added technologies. It would’ve been nice if the same level of spiciness in combat is present in co-op mode.

Our final thoughts

Voidfall has consumed most of our free time. It’s a highly addictive game. We’ve tried different playstyles, houses, and strategies and talked a lot about it outside the game sessions. So we can safely say that Voidfall is a good game.

But it also made us think and discuss about what it means for a co-op game to be good. It logically follows that a good purely cooperative game is a good game, but whether a good game with a co-op mode is a good co-op game is a different question. We’re still thinking about it.

But we think that for a co-op game to be good, the spirit of cooperation in some form (i.e. by discussing strategies or theorizing together) should at least be there. It wasn’t there in scenarios with low complexity in Voidfall, but it was very much present when we were struggling against the Voidborn.

It’s difficult for us to say that Voidfall’s co-op mode is good in general, but we think that it’s really really good in scenarios where we cooperated more. And we probably wouldn’t have the opportunity to reflect more on how we play and cooperate had we not chosen to get Voidfall.

Kaysee’s rating: 4/5
Max’s rating: 4/5

Combined rating: 4/5

Title: Voidfall (2023)
Game Design: Nigel Buckle, Dávid Turczi
Illustration: Ian O’Toole
Publisher: Mindclash Games

Photos by Kaysee

The post Voidfall in Co-op Mode (2-player review) appeared first on Schmeeples.

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