Spark Riders 3000 arrived at my house in the USA on Saturday, March 16th 2024. This is a cooperative game for 1-4 players about flying a spaceship … but trying not to blow up! Players work together to keep a ship operational as they try to deliver some packages, but asteroids, nebulas, bad guys, space pirates, and other wacky things conspire against the players!

This was originally on Kickstarter back in September 2022.  It has already delivered to most of the world, but we here in the USA are just getting the game.  It promised delivery in November 2023: it’s 6 months late, but in Kickstarter-land, that’s not too bad … at least they delivered!

The version we got from Kickstarter was the Commander Version which is the deluxe version (with lots of plastic instead of cardboard standees).  We also got the Prosperity Box (which has 2 new characters and some really nice tokens we’ll see later).

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

Spark Riders 3000 is a pretty standard sized box.

See the #2 pencil and can of Coke for scale above.

The component for this game are just gorgeous and brightly colored and easy to read!

The cards are all brightly colored and easy to read as well! See above.

The plastic minis (in this Commander Version) are just so neat!

The dice and other tokens are also quite nice!

Honestly, this game looks like a big, brightly colored toy!  It has very nice components!

Rulebook

Like the components, this rulebook is big and bright and easy to read.

It gets about a B on the Chair Test: it flops over a little too much, but at least the text is all bright and fairly easy to read with a big font.

Unfortunately, the component section (on the first page above) is not great: there is no picture of the components, just a list.  So, you have to guess what everything is.  It’s not a big deal, but it is annoying.

The set-up pages (above) are very nice:  they are well annotated and very clear!  Good job!

The rest of the rulebook is quite nice: it’s well laid-out, pretty easy to read and pretty easy to look stuff up.

I would almost complain that the rulebook is too “colorful” (see composite above) because all the color and pretty pages can distract from just reading the rules. I don’t know why I am complaining about this … it’s dumb to complain about that when the rules are quite well done. But all that overload of color is a little distracting.

There is no index. Sigh.

But the last back page is a very useful quick summary.

This was a good rulebook overall.  I wish they had an index, but generally it wasn’t too hard to find rules when you needed to look them.  The lack of annotated components was easy to get over, but it was still annoying with such a (generally) good rulebook. I suppose the Tutorial takes care of some of that (see below).

The App

This game requires an App!! You CANNOT play Spark Riders 3000 without an App!  So, I downloaded the the app to my phone.

It’s a little small on my small phone screen …

However, you can see (above) why I switched to the iPad: I couldn’t press the buttons on the very bottom on the screen!  See above. Sigh!!  When I saw this, I then downloaded it my iPad.

It’s actually nicer on the iPad: it’s easier to see everything.

But the I got this message … See above?!?!?!  I cannot use it on either?!??!?!  This is going to be a short review!!

It turns out, even with that message, I could still use the iPad to run the game.  Honestly, the iPad is better because everyone can see it a lot easier!  I am a little grumpy that I struggled with my iPhone and my iPad.  For a very short 5 minutes, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to play the game! (Basically, I was able to press the button … barely … on my phone, and then I found I could still go forward in the game for my iPad.  So either way would work).

I recommend using the iPad if it works for you: it’s bigger and easier for everyone to read.

UPDATE: After waiting a few days, they updated the App, so I don’t have the iPad error messages anymore!  So that’s good!  Unfortunately, the voice recognition is much worse and almost unusable in the most recent version.  Sigh.  Gain one thing, lose another.

Learn How To Play

So, I learned how to play by first watching the animated video …

… and then reading the rulebook.  

Why do both?  I found the animated app useful to introduce a lot of concepts, and show some basic examples, but it wasn’t enough to start playing.

I needed the rulebook to look stuff up.  Caveat Emptor.  Maybe you can just learn it from the Tutorial, but I needed the rulebook.

How To Play

Download the app. Select your heroes!

Each player chooses to play one of five characters (there’s two more characters in the Prosperity Box).  Each player has a special ability, basically helping him do one of the 5 major actions just a little better:

The major actions are Pilot/Shoot/Tinker, Move, and  Help.

Each character also has some special Help actions specific to their character.

We used the upgraded Help tokens from the Prosperity Box, but there are also cardboard help tokens. See above.

Basically, on the player’s turn, they can each do exactly three things: Move, Help, and “Perform Action” (Pilot/Tinker/Shoot).  The cool thing is that this is fine-grained Player Selected Turn Order!  That’s right, each player can intersperse their three actions amongst each others actions! For example: Nova can move, then Igor can Help, then Igor can Move, then Nova can Help, then Nova can Perform Action, then Igor can Perform Action!  This allows the characters to more easily support each other, as they can break up their turns any way they want!

Players move around the ship, trying to position themselves to do major actions!  For example, Igor (above) can Pilot as his major action because he’s in the cockpit!  Nova can move three to end up at the laser and shoot!

This game is all about trying to decide when to repair parts of your ship, when to build weapon and their upgrades, pilot as fast you can to complete the missions, while fighting spaceships off the left and right sides of the ship!

See above as Nova can operate the cannon to fire at the Grey Alien!

All the major actions in this game involve dice, but the color coding is pretty clear!  Piloting actions require the green dice, Shooting requires the red ice, Tinkering (repairing/upgrading) requires the blue dice, the orange dice are for armor-breaking rolls, and the Black Dice are for armor checks.

After you do a check, you will tell the app what you rolled! Click on the little Robot Icon and say “Speed Piloting Level 3!” (if you rolled three successes on a pilot roll), and the app will respond with what happens!

My first game, the app worked pretty well: I was able to tell the app something, and it seemed to recognize everything just fine!

My second game (after I upgraded the App, only a few days downloaded the original app), the voice recognition stopped working, so I had to use the manual system (inside the app) to specify my dice rolls.  This was very annoying, but at least the system allowed me to continue and still enter the information.

Basically, each game has a mission to complete: it specifies what you have to do and the flight you have to take.  You have to decide when to run, when to repair, and when to fight in the game!

Solo Game

So, the game does support solo play (Congratulations on following Saunders’ Law: this cooperative game has a viable solo mode!) In this case, it’s very easy: the solo player plays as if it’s a 2-Player game, taking the role of two characters.

In my first game, I played as Igor and Nova: see above.  Igor is better at piloting, and Nova is better at shooting.  

I was able to barely pull off a win in my first game … but I lost part of my ship!

I choose to make a run for it in the end, which caused me to lose a compartment off the ship!  Luckily this thing will fly as long as “most” of the ship is there!  

As I played, I would make rolls and and then tell the app what I rolled.

I would generally try to get Nova to shoot (see her operating the cannon above) as her Shoot special ability gives her +1 success!

Igor piloted when he got the chance, outrunning some of the enemies!

Occasionally, my team would come across aliens, and we’d have to make decisions … Fight them? Give them something?  Out-run them?  There were about 3 to 4 interludes like this, giving us some “Choose Your Own Adventure” type options as we played.

I won my first game … but for some reason, I thought it was just okay.  Why?

Problems With Solo?

Over the course of my first solo game, I think I did the Help action exactly three times, and none of them helped at all!  (The main “Help” is to allow a reroll, and all the rerolls failed).

The main problem with the Help action is

1. You have to be close to each other to offer Help  (so you can place your help token down).  In a two character game, you have to roam the ship to get stuff done and are very likely not near each other!
2. The Help actions are specialized per character!  You can only help on certain actions!  “I can help you shoot!  Oh wait, you are tinkering, I am no help…”.  You can always help with a reroll, but you HAVE to take the second roll of a reroll, and sometimes that’s worse!

Remember, you only do three things on a character’s turn: Move, Place a Help Token, or Major Action.  If you can’t place a Help Token anyplace useful, it feels like your Help turn is completely useless!  

I felt very much ennui after playing my first solo game.  Most of the time, I couldn’t do a Help, which means I lost a third of my turn!!

Solo Game Revisited

To make sure this wasn’t an isolated event, so I played a second solo game, trying to concentrate more on helping.  

I did a little more helping, but because the characters tend to be far away from each other, even leaving help tokens laying around to be picked up later still didn’t result in a lot of help!

I think the solo and 2-Player game might not be the best way to play this game: they don’t offer enough opportunities to Help each other! In a game where a third of your turn is offering Help, you can feel very impotent if you can’t offer help!!   I am hopeful that this “can’t help” problem will go away in a 3 or 4-Player game, where players will physically be closer to each other a lot more (and thus have more opportunities to help). See that discussion below …

I am not sure I will play the solo game again. This is partly because of the of Help opportunities, but partly because of the “along for the ride” issue we’ll discuss later.

Cooperative Play

We started the cooperative play (4 players) with the Tutorial video.  The tutoriual worked really well at introducing the team to the game.  It was still helpful that I had read the rulebook, but I was able to shepherd people along pretty quickly.

The cooperative game lasted about 2 hours.

But in the end, the Help actions were MUCH MORE effective in a 4-Player game!  It actually felt like you were helping much more!  That one little detail seemed to make all the difference in making the game fun … With 4 people wandering the ship, it was much easier to help somebody do something on their turn, even if it was just a reroll …

The cooperative game for 4-Players seemed to fix the main problem I had in the 2-Player/Solo game: the Help actions were much more … helpful.

The App

The app needs to be connected to the internet.  That may or may not turn you off, but you should be aware. And the App is required.

The video tutorial in the app was really good at getting everyone into the game quickly.

My friends noted that the App really felt well-integrated into the game! It was very thematic to have a spaceship with a console in the App!  It just seemed like having this on a computer seemed so thematic in a space-based game!

We were still having voice recognition problems in the cooperative game.  We were able to work around them in the app, but it was still annoying.

Along For The Ride

So, after a number of plays, I realized especially in the solo game, that I felt like I was just “along for the ride” a lot of time.   I had no idea what a failed or successful dice roll would do!!  For example, When I piloted well, would I out run the enemy ships?? Maybe?  I had NO IDEA what the odds were!  Was it worth wasting a HELP on Piloting to get that extra +1 for Piloting???  I don’t know!  

I don’t know the odds of a ship coming up, I don’t know what part of the ship it will attack, I don’t know the odds of a Orange ship versus other ships.  Things just kind of happen to you … and you do the best you can!

Some of you are probably saying, “What are you complaining about?  This sounds so cool!  You just fly around like Firefly and make decisions!  You don’t have to worry about computing any odds or looking up charts, you just do stuff and see what happens!!!:

But that’s the thing, that’s not why I play board games.  I like to know what’s going on, what are the odds, should I go for that extra +1 because the difference is huge??  

I felt like I was just along for ride: I would roll dice, tell the app, do a few things and just see what happened.  It felt way too easy to lose just because they bad guys attacked a random part of the ship, or my armor failed, or something else.

There is a lot to like here: it really does feel like an adventure, flying through the galaxy.  But I just felt disconnected from the game (mostly in the solo game) because I didn’t know the odds or have any sense of what a success of failure is. I can see some of this going away if you play the game more and more (and can see the results of your actions), but that’s not what I want to be doing with my time.

Interestingly, a lot of this “Along For The Ride” bad feeling went away when I played the 4-Player game … maybe because I was okay being along for the ride … because I was with my friends?

What I Liked

The production is phenomenal and the game looks like a bright toy!

The app, when it’s working, offers some interesting story elements to help keep the game engaging (both with the story and “Choose your Own Adventure” moments!).

The app feels so thematic because it feels like how you would be piloting a space ship!!

The cards are all easy to read. The color coding system is consistent throughout and makes it easy to correlate pieces and their contributions.

Even when you fail a dice roll, you still get a crystal: if you get enough, you can buy Prosperity tokens in the future!  I like this!  A failure at least offers you the hope of  cool item, so that’s kind of a nice dice mitigation mechanism.  Even though this is a dice game, this mechanism makes it feel much less random.

This really is an adventure where you don’t have to worry too much about stuff: the app takes care of a lot of stuff and you can just sit back and enjoy the ride!

I really liked the colorful rulebook .. even though it didn’t have an index, it was still pretty easy to look stuff up!

The tutorial was very good at giving you a sense of the game.

The game is cooperative and has Player Selected Turn Order (fine-grained), one of my favorite mechanisms in a co-op! You feel that much more involved if you get to pick the order!

What I Didn’t Like

Like I said in the “Along For The Ride” section, I didn’t feel engaged because I had no idea what my dice rolls meant. I just rolled the dice and see what app told me to do. It didn’t draw me in.  Again, this was mostly in the solo/2-Player modes …

The app sometimes worked, and sometimes didn’t.  It looks like they got rid of iPhone vs iPad issue with the latest update, but now my text recognition doesn’t quite work.  I am pretty confident they will address these issues and fix them (because they are obviously still updating it), but it’s something to be aware of.

The lack of Help opportunities in the solo or 2-Player game was frustrating.

The Help actions seemed a little rough.  Since every help token can do different things (you can always reroll, but everybody also has “special” specific help they can give), why didn’t they notate that on the tokens you give?  Then you could SEE ON THE TOKEN what the help actions could be!Have side 1 of the Help token show actions 1 and 2, and have side 2 of the Help Token show actions 1,2 , and 3 (because the helpee has to unlock the third Help action).  This would have help smoothed out the Help action quite a bit …

Conclusion

Spark Riders 3000 is an absolutely joyful design: the components, the colors, the app, all bring you into this world!

If you want a game where you are traversing the galaxy, making quick decisions, and not sweating the small stuff, this is a game for you!  The game is an adventure in space making the right decisions: Fight? Flight? Repair?  Everything do you matters!

Unfortunately, I personally had some trouble with the game because I many times I didn’t have sense what my dice rolls meant.  I would jut roll dice and consult the app … should I have tried harder?  Should I have gone for that extra help?  I didn’t know because I didn’t know what the dice rolls meant.  I’ll be honest, I really think this is just a “me” problem.  This problem seemed to be really exacerbated in the solo/2-Player game.

Cooperatively, this game a is fun romp with your friends!  The main problems I had with solo/2-Player (can’t use Help very often) went away with the higher player counts: you are engaged with your friends and all your help actions all matter! I was much more okay being along for the ride when I was with my friends!

There are some problems with the game, but in general this is a joyous adventure in space!  I probably would objectively give it a 7/10 at 3 Players or 4 players (but maybe only a 5/10 or 6/10 at solo or 2-Player play).  I didn’t love this game, but that’s a me issue: I suspect a ton of people will LOVE LOVE LOVE this game because it’s such a neat adventure.  My friends didn’t see the solo issues I saw, so they only saw the joy of the 4-Player game … so much so that they want to play again.

If this game sounds fun to you, I would suggest only playing at higher player counts: that’s when it sparks the most joy.