Dawn on Titan: Board Game Review

A space-themed family weight game with combat and exploration

30-60 minutes

Designer: Björn Ekenberg
Artist: Madeleine Fjäll
Publisher: Ion Game Design

For those who have read our reviews before, you might have noticed that we talk about the perfect games for different situation. Sometimes the kids are at nana’s and we have the energy for a three-hour round of Feast for Odin. With full-time WFH and full-time parenting, this doesn’t happen all the time. More often, we want something quick, yet satisfying that we can fit into a time crunch. Sometimes, we want that quick game to involve blowing each other up in space. The key to a healthy relationship. 

In this review, we’ll give an overview and review of the Kickstarter release Dawn on Titan, which can be backed until March 15, 2021.

For more information, visit the Dawn on Titan Kickstarter HERE.

Dawn on Titan box cover

Gameplay Overview

This is a general overview to provide context for the review, not an in-depth how to play. Some rules may be glossed over or missing.

We played Dawn on Titan in prototype form on Tabletop Simulator. All gameplay and imagery is subject to change and there may be some differences between physical and digital experiences.

In Dawn on Titan, 1-4 players take on the role or corporations in the not so distant future vying for control of Saturn’s moons and their resources. We played at 2 player and 4 player. 

Game Flow

Throughout the game players will use their spaceships to move between, explore, and build industries upon the moons of Saturn. The game is played on a turn by turn basis, and ends when one player builds all of their industries. 

Setup

There is a central board depicting Saturn and three orbital rings (technically Saturn also counts as an orbit). Moons and Moonlets are placed around each orbits in the indicated space. 

Each player gets a player board, their player pieces, starting combat cards, and a deck of card upgrades in their color. 

Note: The player boards are slightly asymmetric in that they each have a unique distribution of the different types of industries (though they all have the same total number of industries). It’s a nice idea, but we didn’t think this had a big impact on playing the game and it didn’t have a huge bearing on what we chose to do.

2 Player central board
2-player board set up. Gold vs. Silver orbits have different directionality.

Concept: Directionality

Before we get into talking about actions, we want to touch on movement and directionality. There are two directions: everything silver is going clockwise, everything gold is going counterclockwise. This becomes important any time you want your ship to interact with something. More on that in a moment. 

Player Turn

On each turn, players have 3 actions to “spend” on many different options. 

Ship Actions

  • Fly – move a number of spaces determined by which orbit your ship starts in. Your ship must move in the direction of the ships color, but doesn’t have to be the color of the orbit it’s moving through
    • E.g. a ship on the gold side must move counterclockwise
  • Immelmann – change the direction of your spaceship (gold to silver, vice versa)
  • Explore – flip a moon or moonlet with the same directionality of your ship
    • Pro Tip: Moonlets have a variety of effects. Most help you out but some have negative effects. 
  • Build – build an industry from your player mat on an explored (flipped) moon
    • Each moon depicts two industries: players can choose to build one or the other. Each moon can only have one industry total 

Pro Tip: Your ship must be on the same color side (silver vs. gold) as the moon you’re interacting with to explore or build on it.

Dawn on Titan player mat
Player board - place resourced in the yellow boxes. Place industry tokens in the upper left. The number of each industry token type changes from board to board, but not the total number.

Industry Actions

  • Build – build a spaceship or upgrade a combat card
    • Players must have an industry of the same type as the ship/card already built on the central board 
    • Ship: place the ship on the same moon as the industry, the same color as that industry’s moon (gold or silver)
    • Card: replace the “setup” card that matches. Players may never have more than 4 cards in hand
  • Produce – produce the matching resource on one of your industries
    • Place the resource in an outlined space on the player board

Combat Actions

Players can initiate combat by being in the same location (grid square) and with the same directionality (gold or silver) as another player’s unit. Units are both ships and industries. The industry tokens are considered to have the directionality of the moon they are built on.

To engage in combat, players will select one of their combat cards and place it face down in front of them. (All players have the same starting deck of combat cards). 

Plasma card
Laser Card
Charged Particles Card

The combat deck consists of 3 weapons (Lasers, Plasma, and Charged Particles) and a security/industry card that can only be played if there is an industry in combat. 

Combat plays out like Rock, Paper, Scissors. Plasma > Lasers, Lasers > Charged Particles, Charged Particles > Plasma

Upgraded weapons will beat their un-upgraded counterparts. 

The loser of combat can choose which unit (industry or ship) if more than one unit is present at the combat location.

Pro Tip: if you have a location you really want to protect, like the helium clouds that are super limited, keep a ship or two there. Even if you lose in combat, then you have something other than your industry to destroy.

End of Game

The game ends immediately once a player has built all 7 of their industries. There is no end game scoring.

What do we think?

Dawn on Titan fits into that “family weight” category nicely. It’s quick (we played a 4 player game in less than an hour), approachable, and easy to understand within the first play. It’s complex enough that a wide range of gamers will have fun, but not so complex as to exclude less experienced or younger players. We could see this game appealing to a relatively wide audience.

There are a couple fun unique mechanisms that stand out. The directional movement adds a layer of complexity that is super fun to work around in your strategy. The rock-paper-scissors combat is fairly unique and during a 2-player game it was fun to track what upgrade cards your opponent is playing to try and get in their head. The player boards are asymmetric, but we didn’t find that it had all that much impact on how you play the game, other than perhaps making slightly different decisions about which industries to get out first. 

4 player setup
Mid-game getting dicey (not literally, there's no dice)

What did we like?

Dawn on Titan has great theme integration and the artwork is awesome. The directionality of the different orbits is a fun mechanism and adds a layer of complexity that forces you to be more thoughtful about your turns. 

We like action selection games, too, where you have a set number of actions per turn (3 in this case) and you can “spend” them how you want. It means you have a lot of flexibility and options to accomplish what you’re trying to do (like attacking again right away with a second ship after losing the first…).

Dawn on Titan also does something that is fairly challenging – it manages to be fun and engaging for players across multiple experience levels in a way that’s so important for family weight games. New (or younger) gamers would be able to have fun while more experienced gamers would stay engaged. 

Dawn on Titan components
There are not a ton of components, so setup/takedown is super quick!

What didn't we like?

The first half of the game is a bit slow, since it makes the most sense to try and flip, build, move, flip, build, move, etc. to get as many of your industries out as possible. All the excitement of combat ended up being in the latter half of the game as players duke it out over a few moons (and helium clouds). Sarah tried going for a more combative strategy from the get-go, but she ended up getting crushed since the whole goal is to get your industries out and Emily was able to out race her. 

We thought the 2-player game was underwhelming. We were able to avoid each other for the vast majority of the game and only interact at the very end. The helium cloud is the one very limited build space, since there’s only 1 in a 2-player game and 2 in a 3+ player game. The problem is they’re relatively easy to defend if you plan for it, so in a 2-player game the first one to the helium cloud has a huge advantage. The other player has to waste effort trying to attack you and all you have to do is keep a ship there while you spend the rest of your time exploring/building until you win. This was way less of an issue in the 4-player game, since there was more interaction overall.

Who will like this game?

Forbidden Island Cover

The rock-paper-scissors combat is fairly stress free for folks who want interaction without it getting to emotional. Since it’s (mostly) based in luck with a little bit of strategy, it’s more lighthearted than other combat-centric games which makes it a great fit for friendly and family game nights. 

It has a strong exploration and movement mechanism that reminds us of Forbidden Island, with a race to build that’s more like Ticket to Ride. People who are looking for a family or friendly game with a bit of head-to-head and a cool theme will like Dawn on Titan. 

Sarah's Take

I really love the retro sci fi art and color scheme of Dawn on Titan and it is what really draws me into the game. 

Dawn on Titan is an action selection game, but the method of winning comes down to a race. Be the first to build all 7 industries. Y’all have heard me say it before, but having that stress of the race just frazzles my brain and it’s not for me. 

The directionality concept is really strong and unique for a family style game and, overall, I would say that’s what really kept me engaged in our plays of Dawn on Titan. 

Also, this is definitely specific to mostly only playing games with your spouse, but when we do combat in a 2 player game, Emily and I can get into each others heads so well that 4/5 times we end up in a draw. 

Emily's Take

I typically enjoy much heavier games, but there’s a space in my heart for all sorts. This is a great friend group game for me, since its interesting enough to be engaging while also being relatively light. Great game for a group looking for a less serious, lighter game. 

Breakdown

Rulebook / Learning the game

The rules were super straightforward, so that we were able to teach our friends in about fifteen minutes (maybe a little more since we were all new to Tabletop Simulator and needed extra time for user errors). The player boards and the main board also have good reminders about actions and movement rules.

First Play

First play was relatively easy since the rules were straightforward and the actions printed on the player boards serve as a good reminder. We were able to learn and then jump in immediately, the entire thing taking about 45 min the first time.  

Subsequent Plays

The next few plays we were able to dig a bit more into how to win vs. just how to play. It is at its core a race game, so going hard for getting a couple industries as fast as possible has seemed to be the best strategy (duh, since that’s how you win). That way you can produce (or risk moonlets) to get resources for building a bunch more ships, which let you explore more and so on. For us, even when we tried to push combat to the early game it didn’t make much of a difference. 

Parent Perspective

Interruptions

We handled interruptions just fine with Dawn on Titan. You can think a few turns ahead, but the “next best” action is usually fairly obvious. The game is also very forgiving of mistakes, since it’s so flexible, so if you do something dumb you can usually make up for it later. 

Time Investment

The BGG page puts this at 30 min and that was about right for us at 2 player. It was closer to 60 min at 4, but has a fairly slow ramp up and then finishes fast and strong! Setup/takedown was digital on TSS, but there aren’t a ton of components so that should be quick.

Life Fit

Our kiddos are still too young for Dawn on Titan, but this would be a perfect game for when they’re around 10 or so and want a bit more challenge. Right now we would play Dawn on Titan as a quick weeknight game, or to begin or end a more cutthroat game night with something more lighthearted. Perhaps if Sarah (and our buddy Kyle) could ever again convince Emily (and our buddy Brittany) to be emotionally devastated (again) in a game like Cyclades or The Estates, this would make the perfect friendly game to balance out the night. With a bottle of wine, of course. 

Rating

6/10

For a family weight game, Dawn on Titan is pretty good. It has some interesting concepts, especially with the directionality of movement rules. Overall the family game category is crowded with some fantastic games like Ticket to Ride and Wingspan that make it hard for new games to carve out a space. Since our rating scale is based on how often we would play vs. other games in that category, it’s tough to beat some of those classics. We do think Dawn on Titan would make a great addition to any family’s game shelf with the great theme, unique mechanisms, and fun gameplay. 

*See our rating scale HERE

Learn more & back Dawn on Titan on the Kickstarter page HERE

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