SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

In SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, you lead a scientific institution tasked with searching for traces of life beyond planet Earth. The game draws inspiration from current or emerging technologies and efforts in space exploration. Players will explore nearby planets and their moons by launching probes from Earth while taking advantage of ever-shifting planetary positions. Decide whether to land on their surfaces to collect valuable samples or stay in orbit for a broader survey. Additionally, by directing your telescopes to gaze into distant star systems, you may detect traces of alien signals or undiscovered exoplanets, and collect promising data to examine and study back home. Back on Earth, you can invest in upgrading your equipment so you can analyze incoming data more efficiently, boost your telescope signal capacity, or increase your supply of resources—all to expand the scope of your search that could lead to a discovery of extraterrestrial life forms. Finding traces of extraterrestrial life is only a matter of time—utilize the resources you have at your disposal strategically and you may well end up being the one to make the biggest scientific contribution towards advancing our understanding of alien life within our galaxy. You will also make use of over 200 cards to aid your efforts or focus your research in a particular direction for additional bonuses and rewards. Each card has unique effects and illustrations and depicts real-life technologies, projects, and discoveries (like the ISS, Large Hadron Collider, Perseverance rover, Voyager probe, and many more). The game is played in five rounds. The player with the starting player marker takes the first turn of the round. Players take turns in clockwise order, skipping any players who have already passed for the round. At the end of round 5, the final score is calculated and the player with the most points wins. SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence pays homage to space and planetary exploration, astronomy, the ongoing search for signs of life in the vastness of space, and efforts to understand the nature of life in the universe. —description from the publisher

{
  "game_id": 418059,
  "name": "SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence",
  "core_verb": "launch probes and analyze data",
  "decision_shape": "combinatorial",
  "reward_schedule": "mixed:delayed+engine_compounding",
  "aesthetics": [
    "Discovery",
    "Challenge",
    "Narrative"
  ],
  "core_loop_pitch": "Spend resources to launch probes at moving planets, scan distant stars for signal traces, and analyze sample tracks to score discoveries.",
  "mobile_translation_difficulty": "Medium",
  "translation_difficulty_reason": "No official port yet — only TTS mod; CGE has a digital team so one is plausible, but the orbital tracks and 200-card economy are heavy to UI well.",
  "direct_digital_port": null,
  "closest_loop_translation": "none yet",
  "primitive_tags": [
    "orbital_position_timing",
    "multi_track_research_progression",
    "sample_analysis_pipeline",
    "tech_card_engine",
    "discovery_drip_reveal"
  ],
  "confidence": 0.6
}

{
  "game_id": 418059,
  "name": "SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence",
  "mechanics": {
    "core_verb_long": "On your turn you take one main action (launch a probe, scan a star system, analyze data, develop equipment, or play a project card) plus any number of free actions, most of which are spent by discarding cards from your hand of multi-use cards for their top-left ability. The defining tactile gesture is sliding a probe along the orbital tracks toward a target planet whose position has been pre-shifted by rotating the inner, middle, or outer disc of the modular solar system board. Cards do triple duty as actions, money, and end-game scoring, so each card pickup is a small triage decision before it ever hits the table.",
    "core_loop_long": "The game runs five rounds. Each round, players take turns clockwise (skipping anyone who has passed) spending income and cards on a single main action plus chained free actions, until everyone passes. Probes generate landings and orbital scans; telescopes pull in data tokens that must be analyzed back on Earth; completing all three trace types (scan + landing + data) on a given alien species triggers a discovery, which flips that alien's hidden board and seeds new rules, cards, and scoring tokens into the rest of the game. Between rounds, the solar-system discs rotate, repositioning planets so previously parked probes drift toward or away from targets. After round 5 you score area-majority on alien tracks, hand-played objective cards, and end-game bonuses; highest total wins.",
    "decision_space": "The dominant tradeoff is short tempo (cash a card now for an immediate scan) versus long tempo (hold the card for its end-game scoring face or its objective tag). Layered on top is spatial timing: orbital geometry rewards players who launch a probe on round 2 anticipating where Mars will be on round 4, so misreading the disc rotation costs whole turns. The 200+ unique cards mean the option space at a typical turn is wide (often 5-10 plausible main actions plus a half-dozen free-action card plays), and the appearance of an alien discovery mid-game can suddenly invalidate a build that ignored that species's track. Good moves are hard to identify because every card is also a currency, so 'is this card worth more as money, action, or VP?' has no stable answer.",
    "skill_expression": "Strongest skills: forward planning (chaining a probe launch through two disc rotations to land exactly when a moon is in range) and card-economy literacy (reading a hand of 6-8 multi-use cards and finding the play that uses each card on its strongest face). Secondary: opponent reading on the alien-track area majority - knowing when to contest a species versus when to let it go and pivot to a different end-game objective. Almost no memory load thanks to open information, but heavy mental arithmetic for the income/conversion chains. The game punishes players who think one turn at a time and rewards those who already know what their round-5 board will look like.",
    "tactile_dependency": "low",
    "tactile_dependency_reason": "Although the rotating solar-system discs are the marquee physical conceit, they encode a fully legible spatial state - which planet is in which orbital slot - that a digital implementation can render with cleaner visuals and an animated rotation. Probes, cards, and tokens are all informational; nothing in SETI requires hands except shuffling."
  },
  "theme": {
    "promise": "Run a real space agency. Launch probes, point telescopes at exoplanets, analyze the signals back home, and be the team that finally proves we are not alone.",
    "setting": "Sci-fi, hard science, near-future space exploration, astronomy",
    "narrative": "embedded - story unfolds as alien species are discovered mid-game, each flipping a hidden board with its own thematic rules. Not a campaign; the narrative is one-shot per game but genuinely emergent.",
    "audience": "hobbyist Eurogamer, hardcore strategist",
    "art_direction": "Sci-fi minimalist with a NASA-press-kit palette: deep blacks, clean whites, technical iconography, real-mission iconography on cards (Voyager, ISS, JWST, Perseverance). Card art treats actual hardware photographs and diagrams with a documentary reverence rather than pulp-sci-fi flair - the look is closer to a Planetary Society annual report than to a Star Wars novel."
  },
  "translation": {
    "digital_meta_layer_ideas": [
      "5-mission roguelite campaign: each run is one rotating solar system seed with a different alien species pool, drafted card upgrades between missions, run ends if no discovery is logged by round 5",
      "Async PvP league: weekly fixed-seed solar system + shared alien tracks; players submit their 5-round plan and the server resolves area majority, leaderboard by VP",
      "Persistent agency progression: unlock real-mission cards (Voyager, JWST, etc.) by hitting science milestones across runs, with each card carrying both a gameplay and a real-world flavor entry",
      "Daily 'observation window' challenge: a single fixed disc rotation puzzle with a target species - shortest path to discovery wins"
    ],
    "closest_mobile_genre": "roguelite deckbuilder",
    "live_service_potential": "medium"
  },
  "confidence": 0.72,
  "extraction_version": "v3"
}