Gravwell

So I recently played the game Gravwell and quickly fell in love with its at least semi-realistic quirky game-play. The game is older and had fallen out of print, but the rights were sold, and a new company has it and it running with it, or that's at least what I'm told but I digress.

Gravwell, is a game that can be both fun and educational. The object of the game is to escape from a blackhole. The game board is setup in a spiral, and you're working to go from the center outwards. You draft movement cards from piles of cards, one face up and one face down, (to enter some element of chance) and these cards have a number on them indicating how far the movement will be. After the first round, in which all movement moves you out of the spiral, the game mechanics take full effect. What does that entail? 

In space, you're always atracted to the nearest form of gravity and in this game, the same mechanics apply. What provides the gravity? Your enemy ships, as well as a few derelict ships floating around. So if you're in the back of the pack when you play a movement card, you can use your enemies to slingshot you forward in their direction. Similarly, if you're in the front of the pack, your enemies will slingshot you backwards, because they've become the nearest point of gravity. (In a tie situation of equal spacing, you get to go forwards). You're also able to play an anti gravity card, with has you move away from your enemies, so if you're in front when you use it, you get to go forwards; However, if you're in the back, you go further back. Your third and final movement card makes you the gravity, and has you pull any and ALL ships X distance towards you. This can be useful in many strategic situations. 

So why would you play an anti gravity card in the back of the pack or a (pro?) gravity movement in the front of the pack? Well, you don't always have an option, OR you might not be where you thought you'd be when you've locked in your movement phase. Rather than use a clockwise or counterclockwise turn based system, the cards that you picked up at the beginning of each round have element names on them, and their abbreviated letters are the order that the player movements happen. So for an example, you might think you're safe and can play a big movement card of 6-7 spaces forwards, but somehow your enemies end up farther away from you than a derelict ship that's two spaces behind you, and suddenly you're rocketing backwards. Likewise, you find yourself out in front choosing to play an anti gravity move, but your card is late in the alphabet. So you watch your enemies shoot past, adding insult to injury, your anti gravity card moves you backwards even further. 

Fortunately if there's a major system malfunction, once per round you can use an emergency stop card, and negate a movement for one turn. This game is quirky for sure, but it has it's charm. Game play is fairly quick, so you're not stuck in space for too terribly long. So if you think you have what it takes to escape a black-hole, get your copy HERE! 

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