Ruins of Mars

In Ruins of Mars, players compete to build out their arsenal of knowledge, attempting to understand the languages of ancient civilizations that colonized Mars and made it a hub of economic activity. The game is played around a board with five locations and eleven communal action tiles that are laid out at random underneath the board as evenly as possible.

On a turn, you choose one of the locations, optionally pay to shift an action tile from an adjacent location to the active one, take the action of the location — the effect of which will be based on the tiles below that space — optionally replicate alien tech by paying resources and adding it to your board for personal use, then reallocate the action tiles from the active site in a mancal

In Ruins of Mars, players compete to build out their arsenal of knowledge, attempting to understand the languages of ancient civilizations that colonized Mars and made it a hub of economic activity. The game is played around a board with five locations and eleven communal action tiles that are laid out at random underneath the board as evenly as possible.

On a turn, you choose one of the locations, optionally pay to shift an action tile from an adjacent location to the active one, take the action of the location — the effect of which will be based on the tiles below that space — optionally replicate alien tech by paying resources and adding it to your board for personal use, then reallocate the action tiles from the active site in a mancala-like fashion.

Over the course of the game, you learn the Martian languages and re-discover and study their technologies, which come in three levels and multiple classifications and which grant you special abilities. Along the way, you might pick up radiation from various actions, and you'll want to ditch that if possible so as not to lose points in the final scoring, which is mostly based on the tech you've assembled and your skill with languages.