Designed by: Corey Young
In Gravwell, players have jumped through space and find themselves caught in the tendrils of a black hole. Your goal is simply to escape before the other players do, but it’s not just a matter of acceleration. In fact it’s often just about making sure you’re facing the right direction…
The board shows the path along which all ships will travel, with an inner gate at one and an outer gate at the other. Players start in the middle (2-4 players) or at either gate (5-6) and your goal is to reach the other end of the path. There are two pieces of debris in the path as well: all ships, and both debris count as objects.
Objects – or more specifically, how close they are – define your movement. Everyone has a hand of six movement cards and chooses one to play in each turn, before revealing simultaneously. Most cards move your ship toward the nearest object, but some will push away instead. A minority of cards move all other objects towards or away from you instead. There’s a considerable catch in proceedings, however: all revealed movement cards have a letter and they are played in alphabetical order. If you’re moving later in turn order, this can be bad. Always moving towards the closest object is a curse as much as a blessing, because if by the time your ship engages someone has moved close behind you, you’ll haul off in the wrong direction (if there are objects equidistant ahead and behind, you’ll move in the direction of more objects)
Each round plays out with everyone playing all six cards, one at a time, and enacting the movements – often to the sound of appalled resignation! Then a new round begins and players collect new cards into their hands. If it sounds like chaos, it is. But there is some small measure of mitigation: everyone has an emergency stop card and three special powers specific to them, and them only. Your emergency stop simply prevents your ship moving, and the other powers are all distinct but potentially very helpful: hitching lifts, jumping to debris fields and so on. They’re all one-use only per round, except that they can be recharged in specific circumstances (explained on the cards themselves) and at the end of each round your emergency stop will recharge automatically (if it doesn’t need recharging because you haven’t used it, you can recharge another power instead).
The game continues either until someone reaches their destination gate, or the sixth and final round finishes and whomever is closest to their destination gate the winner.
Plenty - though ships can't damage each other, they can (and will) pull you off course and scuttle your plans
Low to moderate, depending on who's playing
If you can predict what the other players are doing, that's half the battle. Or possibly more.
If you like the chaotic experience Gravell offers, then there are a variety of special powers to explore, and the game is as far from predictable as it's possible to be
2-6
Players
10+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
Gravwell gets only two stars from us, because although there is fun to be had here in the multiple cries of Oh no! when played, we found it just a bit too chaotic, just a bit too long, and too lacking in player agency over what moves where to the point decision-making can sometimes feel entirely moot. Our experience was mostly hoping that when your turn arrived you weren't shuttling your ship off in completely the wrong direction, and being hugely relieved when something went right. I do like games with chaos and chance, and I like games with surprises. I also love a space theme! But I think you need more than constant chaos, and to have any agency at all here means doing some Hawking-esque computing (x ships in y/z/etc positions, n card possibilities) with poker-champion table-reading abilities to second-guess what anyone might do any how it would affect you - depending (again) on the order players activate in. It's well-produced, with an ingenious central idea. But after a fun 20 minutes, there's a sense that you're more often hoping for the best rather than having any actual control over where you're going. If chaos in space is your bag, you can add another star or two onto our rating. If not, Gravwell may frustrate as much as it entertains.