This is Stonemaier’s open-world experiment, one to six players scattered across a single planet, communicating what they’re each finding as they go, and the sheer number of interconnected locations is the first thing that hits you when you unbox it, hundreds of location cards and hundreds more discoverable on top of them, a genuine sandbox rather than a fixed campaign you burn through once. No expansions bolted on later either, it’s designed to be complete and self-contained out of the box, which after years of games that ship half-finished and sell you the rest in waves felt almost refreshing on its own.

I’ve only got a handful of sessions in so far, split between two-player and solo, and my honest read is that it works best when you let it be slow. This isn’t a game that hands you a clear objective and a countdown, it’s closer to an actual exploration, poking at what’s over the next rise because you’re curious, not because a card told you to. The solo variant holds up better than I expected going in skeptical, and the way information gets doled out between separated players, each of you seeing a different corner of the map, creates a kind of low-key storytelling tension that a fully shared board can’t replicate.

It’s early days for me with this one and I’d rather be honest about that than overclaim a verdict after five plays of something built to be explored over dozens. What I can say is the ambition is real, not marketing-copy ambition, actual scale you feel at the table. Four stars for now, with room to move in either direction once I’ve logged enough hours to know whether the sandbox stays interesting once the map stops feeling new.