A Message From The Stars is a cooperative word game that was on Kickstarter back in October 2023.  It was a group of games (Through the Desert, Switchbacks, and A Message From The Stars) that was part of the same Kickstarter: see link here.   The only game we care about here today is A Message From The Stars.  This arrived at my house in last April 2024, after promising delivery in May 2024!  That’s right! It delivered early!  Congratulations to All Play for delivering early!

As a Kickstarter, it came with a little bit extra: fancy dice and dice holders!  See above right.

At first blush, this looks like it might be a party game!  It’s a smaller box and the player count is 2-8+ !

You should heed the label on the back of the game: The Strategy Line (see above).  This isn’t really a party game?  I guess Codenames, another word game, is considered a party game, but this is deeper than Codenames and much harder. Message From The Stars is much more of a deduction game with math and word elements.

Let’s Take A Look!

Unboxing and Gameplay

Even the size of the box suggests it might a party game: it’s relatively small.  See the Coke Can above for scale.

This is a game about two teams: the Aliens and the Scientists!  The two teams are trying to guess (cooperatively) each others words and some important letters!   This is, at its core, a word game.

Each team gets a card with some words on it: see above. The words are in three groups.

Each team (Aliens or Scientists) rolls some dice to choose randomly a word per column.  The Kickstarter expansion that came with the game (see more discussion of this below) holds the card and the dice; this is so you can see what words the Alien (pink above) is trying to communicate to the Scientists! The words are  Pollution (2), Mirrors (5), and President (6).

The Scientists do something similar: the words the Scientists are trying to communicate to the Aliens are Atlantis (2) , Field (4), and Factory (5).  See above.

You might think this sounds like a lot of party games.  But hold on! It gets more complicated! It this were just about guessing words, then, ya, this would be a by-the-numbers party game.  What makes this more complex is that you are also trying communicate which letters are important as well as the words!

There is a deck of 26 cards with the letters on the alphabet.  Each label is labelled with its frequency in words in the English Language: A is a very common letter (green above) and Z is a very very uncommon and labelled a “tough” letter (red above).  The Alien will be randomly choosing 6 of these letters!

Behind the Alien Screen are places for 6 letters: Trust, Amplify, and Suspicious letters. See above and below.

To be clear: this isn’t a cooperative game where you “win” or “lose”!  You just get a final score that tells you how well you did!  The final score of this cooperative game is a metric of how well the Scientists and Aliens communicated!  The final score is the number of words guess correctly (max 6: 3 words from the Aliens and 3 words from the Scientists) plus the number of letters guessed correctly (max 6)!  The maximum score is 6 + 6 = 12, which represents perfect communication.

The game last 4 rounds (in the cooperative mode), which each side providing single word clues to the other side in a round.

For example, over the course of the game, you can see the 4 clues the Aliens (above) provided to the Scientists.

Basically, in just 4 words (and a hash value), the Aliens have to communicate their 3 words and 6 letters, and the Scientists must communicate their 3 words similarly!

The hardest part of this game, which takes it away from a party game and into a deduction game, is that each clue word is also “scored” by how many matching letters it has!

Remember those 6 letters the Alien has?  If the word clue contains some of those 6 letters, the “hash score” value is given along with the word.  Disgusting is given a score of  – 2  for three reasons:

1. It contains the letter T (Trust +1), which starts the value off at 1
2. It contains the letter G (Trust +1), which increments the value to 2
3. Finally, it contains the S (Suspicious -), which negates the value to -2

The rules for the score are not simple, and it takes a few turns to kind of get what’s going on there.  You’ll notice that the word DISGUSTING is doing double-duty: it’s trying to communicate some of the letters AND also a clue on the first column (“Pollution”)!  Is DISGUSTING enough to imply POLLUTION?

There are a number of dry-erase boards for helping keep track of the word “hash scores” so you can try to reverse-engineer why the score was made!

See as Jeff (above) tries to reverse engineer “Hibernate” and “container” to see why they got their scores. Notice how nice and thin the letters are!

This game has fantastic components: everything in the game is dry-erase (the cards and the boards) so it’s easy to re-use them over and over!  Perhaps the best part is that the game uses ultra-fine dry-erase markers!  Recall how “thick” dry-erase markers ruined both The Revenant Society (see link here) and The Forests of Admiron (see link here).   I am glad to see the A Message From The Stars got the better dry-erase markers!!  This makes a huge difference in a word game!

For a game that looks like party game, A Message From The Stars has really, really good components.  Except for the die that comes with the base game …

The base game comes with just a single die you roll.  See above.  You probably want the expansion (below) with the cool dice.

The Expansion

You probably want to get the dice and box expansion (see above). It makes the game that much easier to play.

As a warning, there are absolutely NO INSTRUCTIONS on how to build the dice holders!  I had to look up an image online to see what they looked like!  As a community service, I am providing some pictures (below) of the what they look like when assembled!

Almost there …

Done!  Notice how nice the dice are too.  These holders just make the game a little easier to play.

Solo Play

There is absolutely no solo play in this game!  See the box above!  This is a game for 2 to 8+ players!  Boo for not following Saunders’ Law!!

Since there was no solo play, I just “pretended” to play both sides (mostly the Alien side) so I could get a sense of how everything works.  Once you see how the scoring system works, it clicks!  But it does take a little bit to “get” how this game works.  “Oh, my WORD is supposed to be both a clue for the words AND the letters!! Oh, that’s hard!“

I get why there’s no solo mode: you really can’t have any knowledge of what the other side is doing for their clues.  This is a game with a lot of implications and connotations and indirections with your word clues: it requires a good grasp of the English language and some math skills, but also knowledge of implicit and explicit meanings of words.

We’ve discussed The Changing Perspectives Idea here before, where you run both sides and “pretend” you don’t know what the other side is doing.  That’s a lot harder here in A Message From the Stars because the clues have so much open interpretation!  The Changing Perspectives Idea works so well in Shipwreck Arcana (see link here) because all information is precise: you can use logic to dictate your choices rather than any implications.   Here, in A Message From The Stars, not only do your words have connotation and denotation and context, but they also are chosen to help with the letters! There’s too much “innuendo” and “vaguery” in words for a clean Changing Perspectives Idea to work here.

So, no solo mode.  

Cooperative Mode

So, we’ve tried this a number of groups.   Sara and Teresa and myself played a 3-Player game (I was the Alien, they were the Scientists).

They groked this game pretty quickly, and we got into it.  They liked it!  Sara and I have had good luck with Word Games; I played the Paperback Adventures, another word game, with Sara and we both loved it! See our adventures here!  And Teresa is very smart and precise.  Between the two of them and myself, we had a very good time.  But, me, Sara, and to a lesser extent Teresa, really like word games.   And the math Sara didn’t know, Teresa filled in on.  They were a perfect complement to each other.

Unfortunately, not all my sessions went that well.  See above, as Robert’s look of confusion (upper right) belies his disinterest in the game!  Robert’s a smart guy, but the rules are a little intimidating.  I give Robert a little bit of a pass because he was busy trying to get some work done in the background.  We didn’t have his full attention … and it’s clear this game requires your full attention!

At some point, Robert just walked away and left me and Jeff to play.

Jeff and I had a good time.  But Jeff didn’t love the game: his Math and deduction skills were good, but he doesn’t like word games.  He generally expressed an “admiration” for the game: “This is a good game, just not for me”.

Group Dependent

This is a game that is very group dependent. It has a weird cross-section: you have to like word games, you have to be able to do some math, and you have to be able to do logical deductions. It’s a very cool cross-section! And I love it! I love word games! I love math! I love deduction!

But the rules, especially for scoring the letters, can be very intimidating.  This definitely does not feel like a party game: it’s a very contemplative game as you traverse word, math, and deduction skills.

That picture of Robert walking away is kind of ominous and a little telling: you have to be completely focused on this game for it to be fun.   Otherwise, it’s too easy to get lost.

Know your group.  This game is very group dependent, more than many other games.

Conclusion

I give A Message From The Stars a very strong recommendation … but only for certain groups.  That cross-section of people who like words, maths, and deduction seems like a small set.   I think you’ll know from the description of the game whether this is for you or not.  

The components are great, and the production is quite good for this word game.  They even used ultra-fine dry erase markers!  That’s a gold star from me!  

I really liked this game, but you need to decide for yourself if this is a game for you and your friends.  If you are unsure, give the game a try at a convention or a game store.  I really liked it, and so did some of my friends.  But not all of them.