Continuing with another Top 10 list, this time I’m looking at games that I love which have a Sci-Fi theme on them. I think that there are some Sci-Fi games that are going to be very high on my list of Top 100 games, but as compared to fantasy, I think we’ll be going down lower into the listings to find all of the games.

Kind of like before with fantasy, we’re not going to count space games, so something about going to the moon and the space race, not Sci-Fi. We’re also not going to just limit it to games set in space, there’s way more to Sci-Fi than that. And finally, it’s not going to be Sci-Fi adjacent games, Smash Up has aliens and robots, two common Sci-Fi things, but Smash Up is not a Sci-Fi games.

10 – Risk Legacy
Now, Risk is not a Sci-Fi game, but Risk Legacy is. You’re on a planet that has been terraformed to look like Earth for some reason, and of course you are all fighting over it. You have mechs and missions and it’s basically an area control game, but so much better than basic Risk. Combat is still the same, roll dice, try and take over other territories, however, you have ways to get victory points and when someone has three, the game ends and they are the winner. So a game of Risk Legacy is way shorter, plus, you unlock cool things as the game goes along and some crazy things that really change up the game. It’s a definitely blast to play and you have a usable, though odd, board afterwards, so it isn’t just for the fifteen or so games in the Legacy campaign that you can play.

9 – Star Wars: Imperial Assault
While there are other Sci-Fi dungeon crawlers out there, this is my favorite of them. It has a theme that I love, Star Wars, and it can be played either one versus many with the one player being the DM who is running the empire, or you can play through a campaign using an app where everyone is able to play a rebel and team up together that way. So the game offers flexibility and it offers a lot of fun dice chucking. Now, you don’t get to play all the famous characters, Luke or Darth Vader might show up in the story, but you don’t get to play as them. Instead you’re playing around the main Star Wars story with the campaign in the app. That’s fun as well as you get to kind of flesh out the world in game form. This isn’t my highest Star Wars game on the list, though.

8 – Cry Havoc
This is a very thinky and interesting Sci-Fi game that borrows from Avatar. In this game there are up to four different factions who are fighting for control of crystals on a planet. The Trogs, Humans, and Mechs are all going to be out there and fighting fairly often, whereas the Pilgrims are going to just collecting as many crystals as they can. This game has some interesting card play where you can use the symbols on the cards for your actions, such as moving, recruiting, and building. But at the same time, you need those for when you get into combat, and the combat is unique as well. It has a track of majority, capture, kill. And whomever wins the majority gets the territory, and to do that, you’re just putting your troops from the area onto the various sections. Then you can use cards to move them around an manipulate them. After that, it’s pretty simple, whomever has majority gets the area, then you can capture someone if you played anyone there, limiting your opponents troop totals, and then you can kill off troops so they don’t go back on the board. It’s a very different sort of area control game, but one that works out well.

7 – Gravwell
The closest thing to just being a space game on the list. This one is also the simplest game on the list. You and the other players have had your space ships sucked into a wormhole which is pulling you into a black hole. All you want to do it get back out through the wormhole before it closes. But you’re out of fuel, thankfully you have pure elements on your ship and you can toss those in to try and fly. What is fun is that some elements move you towards the nearest ship (forwards or backwards), or push you away from the nearest ship, or draw ships nearer to you. So while you are trying to escape, you are also worried about what other people are going to be be playing, does my element come after their element alphabetically, if so will they move ahead of me so I can then move ahead of them, or will it pull me backwards, the game is simple, fast, and fun.

6 – Not Alone
So, Star Wars: Imperial Assault was a one versus all game that can be completely cooperative, this game is just a one versus all. In traditional Sci-Fi horror fashion, you’ve crash landed on a planet and you are waiting for a search and rescue party to come get you, and things are alright on the ship, but you need to go out and get supplies, and when you do, you find that you’re not alone on the planet and what’s there wants to take you out. So most of the people are playing the crew of the ship and one person is the monster/planet. The players are planning out where they are going, and they can discuss as much as they want, split up however they want, or discuss as little as they want, but the monster player has to be able to hear it all. It makes it a fun little cat and mouse game as they try and do things to get the ship there faster. And the monster has powers that they can play to mess with things, and then they go to a location, based off of the cards played and what they’ve heard and if they catch crew there or kill crew, they get closer to their winning goal of taking out all of the crew. It’s a fun game and for a small box game it plays pretty fast and simple.

5 – Star Wars: Rebellion
Second and last Star Wars game on the list, Rebellion is what they call on the Dice Tower, and I agree with, Star Wars in a box. You get to play the cat and mouse game of the original trilogy of the empire searching for the rebels hidden base and the rebels trying to sabotage the empire to the point where they can take it down. You get all the classic characters for your leaders, you get to have ground and space battles, overall, the game is just a lot of fun. Now, it’s a two player only game (technically 4 but that’s just splitting up what two players do), and it’s a long one, probably about three hours, unless the empire gets lucky. There’s still dice chucking in combat, so it can be a bit lucky, but overall, it’s a really fun game and a good amount of strategy in the game.

4 – Lords of Hellas
Probably the oddest one on the list, because technically it’s built around ancient Greece and it’s mythology. But there are robots and you are playing in this future cyber punk sort of setting. This is one where the Sci-Fi theme comes through less than some others, but I really like the game. Five players it’s a bit long but that was also a learning game. What makes this game really good in my opinion is that you have so many ways you can win. You can take over two complete regions, you can hold five regions with temples, defeat 3 monsters, or hold a completed statue at the end of three rounds. The game does so many clever things and you feel like you’re going to do one strategy, and then depending on how it goes, you might change that up mid game and basically everyone in our game did that and all of us were at points in time a turn or two away from winning. A really fun game, complex to learn but pretty simple to play.

3 – Clank! In! Space!
This is the tongue in cheek Sci-Fi game, which had to show up on the list at some point in in time. There’s so much Sci-Fi out there, that it’s hard not to make a goof on it at some points. That said, Clank! In! Space! is a great game as you are racing against your opponents into Lord Eradikus’s ship in hopes to steal the best treasure and get out. But sometimes you’re going to make noise, and if you do, you might cause Eradikus to start moving and drawing out cubes (known as clank) and get closer to finding you and taking you out. So how much do you push your luck? Plus, the cards you use are funny and the push your luck and deck building combination of the game works really well. Definitely a fun one, and if you want a fantasy theme instead, just go with Clank or Clank Legacy, which I talked about yesterday.

2 – T.I.M.E. Stories
I said this almost made my fantasy list, the issue was that only one scenario was that fantasy focused. The whole game has a heavy Sci-Fi theme to it. You are part of a time cop team, basically, policing the timeline to stop evil organizations from messing things up for their own gain. Each scenario is different, you might be in ancient Egypt, jump to a timeline where there is magic and dragons, go to a Victorian Asylum, or any other location you can imagine. You go on runs hoping to be able to solve the case and puzzles quickly, but you’ll probably have to go again and again and then hopefully you’ll get it. It’s a lot of fun, you have a good variety to the things that you can do each time, and while sometimes you might need to fight more, that’s probably going to be focus of that case not of all of them. I really enjoy it for the escape room puzzle type feel for it, and the story that they have throughout that tie things together, but also the story of each pack.

1 – XenoShyft: Onslaught
Finally, my favorite Sci-Fi game, and it’s all about fighting bugs. Starship Troopers is a fun and funny movie. While XenoShyft takes itself more seriously, you’re fighting bugs on an alien planet, so I don’t feel like it’s very that serious. This is a cooperative tower defense deck building game. Yeah, there’s a bunch going on in it, and I haven’t even gotten to the cool part. You face off against wave after wave of bugs hoping to keep them from hitting your base by deploying troops, giving them weapons and armor, healing them, whatever you need to do to defend your part of the base. And everyone has their own part. However, if you have a grenade, you can throw it to someone else’s part of the base and use it there, if someone else doesn’t have enough weapons or even troops, you can send some their way, you won’t get them back, but you can send them. You can even drop in paratroopers for someone else. So there’s such a good puzzle aspect and cooperative aspect to the game, it makes it work really well and is a ton of fun.

So in my top 100, that got me about down to #61. That seems like it might be a ways down, but I’ve played around 300 games, so 60 is top 20% of games I’ve played. Now, I’m sure there are a whole lot more Sci-Fi games that I should checkout, but what are some of your favorites from my list? Are there any you want to check out now? What should I checkout?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.