Board Game Review: Gravwell: Escape From The 9th Dimension

Developer Cryptozoic Entertainment
Publisher Renegade Game Studios
Distributor Board Games South Africa
Where we got our copy Board Games South Africa
Table top type Board Games
Players 1-4

PartyPanda5

Published May 3, 2016

To fuel our spaceships, we’ll need some resources. By mining the asteroids that float around in the dimension, we’ll find fuel that will either push our spaceship forward, repulse us away from the nearest spaceship or draw the other players’ ships closer to our own. Through careful management of our resources and keeping track of what the other players do, we’ll be able to be the first to escape from the 9 th Dimension.

Game Components

The Game components of Gravwell are absolutely beautiful. The game’s board and the 26 fuel cards are strongly connected to the theme of space and science through the use of the “periodic table” which is used to fuel your spaceship (I put that in quotation marks because some elements don’t actually exist – but, then again, who knows? Maybe Jakarium is super important in the 9 th Dimension). The 6 spaceship components sit nicely on a small, plastic base which makes moving them across the board a lot easier. The 4 emergency stop cards are well designed and stand out attractively from the rest of the cards. Everything about Gravwell is attractive – even the rule book is pretty!

How to Play

The objective of the game is simple: be the first player to escape through Warp Gate at the end of the spiral of blocks. To do that, however, becomes a bit tricky and requires the players to manage their fuel carefully and watch what other players are doing in their turns.

Each player selects a spaceship and gets an emergency card with the same colour. The players then place the ships in the center of the board (inside the Singularity). The two grey ships are neutral ships that have been abandoned – these go on the yellow blocks on the board.

The Fuel Cards

The fuel cards should be shuffled and be placed faced down. The number of fuel cards to be dealt equal the number of players in the game, multiplied by three (for example, if there are 3 players, then 9 cards will be dealt faced down). Then, on top of each of the faced down cards, place a resource card faced up. At the beginning of the rou nd, each player will choose resource cards (they collect the faced up card on top and faced the down card at the bottom) until the resources run out, starting from the youngest player.

The players then take turns to place the resource that they want to play face down. Once all players have chosen card, players reveal the cards. The resources are then resolved in accordance to their alphabetical order.

H ow to Move

The players move according to the symbol, colour and number indicated on their resource card. For example, a blue card that has a symbol of two arrows pointing towards each other and has a number of 2 will not move, but attract other players towards him/her by 2 spaces. A yellow card with a number of 3 will push the player closer to the closest ship from its position. A purple card with a repulsion symbol and a number of 3 will push the player’s ship away in the direction of the closest ship from its positio n.

At the bottom left of the board, there is a pawn that tracks the rounds of the game. If the players don’t determine a winner by the end of the six rounds, the player closet to the Warp Gate is declared the winner.

Gravwell can be played between 20 – 30 minutes and can fit 1 – 4 players. There multiple modes of the game that players can choose to add or leave out. Gravwell is a beautiful game that really encourages player interactivity and strategy. This game is one of my favourites!

Positive Nodes

Really beautiful! If you’re into space-themed games, this is one of the best in my opinion.

A really strong movement mechanic that forces players to think about how the other players are using their resource cards to move around.

A fun resource management aspect that encourages players to strategize and play carefully.

When you think you’re winning, you’re probably not!

Relatively easy to learn.

Has several types of modes that can be incorporated into the game play.

Negative Nodes

It might be a bit difficult for a younger audience to grasp (10+).

The drafting of the fuel cards can sometimes feel a bit unbalanced and can really mess you around if you don’t get what you need.

The stands that the spaceships sit on can break easily, so take care of them.

So, we’ve just been sucked through a black hole and we’ve found ourselves in a new dimension (the 9th one to be exact). All of us are stuck in the Singularity and we need to try escape through the Warp Gate. Everything that we thought we knew about the laws of physics has changed - and now, working with gravity, we have to push ourselves forward to the exit the Gravwell. To fuel our spaceships, we’ll need some resources. By mining the asteroids that float around in the dimension, we’ll find fuel that will either push our spaceship forward, repulse us away from the nearest spaceship or draw the other players’ ships closer to our own. Through careful management of our resources and keeping track of what the other players do, we’ll be able to be the first to escape from the 9th Dimension. Game Components The Game components of Gravwell are absolutely beautiful. The game’s board and the 26 fuel cards are strongly connected to the theme of space and science through the use of the “periodic table” which is used to fuel your spaceship (I put that in quotation marks because some elements don’t actually exist – but, then again, who knows? Maybe Jakarium is super important in the 9th Dimension). The 6 spaceship components sit nicely on a small, plastic base which makes moving them across the board a lot easier. The 4 emergency stop cards are well designed and stand out attractively from the rest of the cards. Everything about Gravwell is attractive - even the rule book is pretty! How to Play The objective of the game is simple: be the first player to escape through Warp Gate at the end of the spiral of blocks. To do that, however, becomes a bit tricky and requires the players to manage their fuel carefully and watch what other players are doing in their turns. Each player selects a spaceship and gets an emergency card with the same colour. The players then place the ships in the center of the board (inside the Singularity). The two grey ships are neutral ships that have been abandoned – these go on the yellow blocks on the board. The Fuel Cards The fuel cards should be shuffled and be placed faced down. The number of fuel cards to be dealt equal the number of players in the game, multiplied by three (for example, if there are 3 players, then 9 cards will be dealt faced down). Then, on top of each of the faced down cards, place a resource card faced up. At the beginning of the round, each player will choose resource cards (they collect the faced up card on top and faced the down card at the bottom) until the resources run out, starting from the youngest player. The players then take turns to place the resource that they want to play face down. Once all players have chosen card, players reveal the cards. The resources are then…

Tabletop Game Review: Board Game Review: Gravwell: Escape From The 9th Dimension

2016-05-03

PartyPanda5

A Super Fantastic Board Game!

Total - 8

80 8

Gravwell is a beautiful space-themed board game. The movement mechanic is what makes the game so strong. I would recommend this game to both experienced and new board gamers.

User Rating: Be the first one !

Second Opinion The Stubbs Gravwell is a fun, fast paced little game where you have to pilot your ship away from a black hole you’ve just jumped through and back to warp gate. Along the way you’ll be mining asteroids to gather the fuel you need to move your ship. That’s all easier said than done. Mechanically you’re moving your along a spiral by playing fuel cards that you’ve drafted at the start of the round. Half of those are blinds however so you never quite know what you’re getting. Things get a bit more complicated when it comes to movement since it’s all based on your relative position to other players ships. You’re always towards the nearest ship. This means you will end up moving backwards at some point during your game. Lucky you have an Emergancy Stop that cancels all your movement during a round. This all sounds a bit more complicated than it is though. The games I played with non-gamers took about 10 minutes to explain but once everyone got playing it flowed a lot faster than other games I’ve played with them. As with my experienced gamer friends relative movement too far longer to wrap their minds around. It’s a weird mechanic alright! It’s very wibblely wobbly spacey wacey OK!

If I had one issue with Gravwell it would be that the drafting mechanic can be difficult to deal with. It’s possible to get stuck with cards that don’t do much for you since they’re low value or will force you to play before everyone else. Even that isn’t a huge issue though since even getting thrown far back doesn’t mean you’re out of the game and even when you are obviously not going to win the entire game plays at refreshingly fast pace that you can get a bunch of games in an evening. Overall I really enjoyed Gravwell, it’s scratching the itch for rules light games and marries it’s mechanics and themes really well.

The following two tabs change content below. - Bio

Latest Posts

PartyPanda5

Tabletop Author at Geek Node

Andrea is a game designer with a passion for creative writing as well as cats. She is in her 4th year of study at Wits and is all about that academic life. Andrea spends the majority of her time trying to balance out playing really cool games and trying to make really cool games.