Beyond the Sun – Tech Trees and New Worlds

Humanity is standing at the edge of extinction. Centuries of war and environmental collapse have left Earth in ruins. Now, what’s left of its factions sees only one solution: leave the planet behind and build a new future among the stars.

What begins as a collective effort to survive quickly turns into a fierce competition for dominance. In Beyond the Sun, each player leads a rival faction, racing to shape humanity’s technological evolution, explore deep space, and secure their place as the founders of a new galactic civilisation. The dream of survival is shared, but how we get there is very much up for grabs.

👥 2-4 players, ages 14+
⌛ Playing time: 100 minutes
📝 Designer: Dennis K. Chan
🎨 Artwork: Franz Vohwinkel

🏢 Publisher: Rio Grande Games (review copy provided)

Gameplay Overview

Each turn in Beyond the Sun is divided into three phases: taking an action, producing resources, and claiming achievements if you can. It sounds simple, and in a way it is, but the choices you make will send you down completely different paths.

In the action phase, you move your action pawn to an available space on the shared technology board and carry out the action there. At the start, the options are fairly basic. You will be researching new technologies, building spaceships, or improving your ability to generate resources. But as players unlock new techs, more action spaces open up. The technology tree grows during the game, and you are building it together, shaping not only your own strategy but the possibilities for everyone else too.

Research and technological progress are at the heart of everything. You begin with only the simplest spacefaring abilities and gradually work your way up through four levels of technologies. Along the way, you will choose between scientific, economic, military, and commercial advancements. Every new technology you unlock gives you a powerful new tool and changes the options that will be available later on.

At the same time, you are also exploring the stars. The exploration board represents nearby habitable systems, and by building and moving spaceships, you aim to take control of them. Once you control a system and have enough military strength, you can colonise it. Colonising earns you valuable victory points and often grants unique bonuses that boost your faction even further. It also strengthens your economy, giving you more flexibility and faster growth in the turns ahead.

After your action, you move to the production phase. Here, you have a simple but important decision: either grow your population, produce ore (the game’s main resource), or trade between your resources. Managing this well is crucial, because you need population cubes to perform most actions, and ore is what drives your technological and military advances.

Finally, during the achievement phase, you can claim a milestone if you meet its conditions. These might include colonising a certain number of systems or reaching advanced stages of research. Achievements not only score you points but also move the game towards its end. Once a total of four achievements have been claimed, the final round is triggered.

When the game ends, players add up points from technologies researched, systems colonised, automation progress, achievements, and special bonuses from events and system control. Once the final scores are tallied, the faction with the most points becomes the guiding force behind humanity’s new journey among the stars.

Now that you know what the game is about, let’s dive deeper into the experience

Game Info

Beyond the Sun is a space-themed strategy game designed by Dennis K. Chan and published by Rio Grande Games, the American publisher behind classics like Race for the Galaxy and Dominion. It plays two to four players, usually in around one and a half to two hours. Officially it is recommended for ages 14 and up, though if you have a sharp younger player around, they might very well hold their own.

The game originally came out in 2020 and got its first expansion, Leaders of the New Dawn, in 2023. For this review, we will stick to the base game, kindly provided to us by Rio Grande Games. Beyond the Sun is definitely on the heavier side, making it a good fit for players who enjoy long-term planning and those “thinky” moments where every move feels important. If you love a bit of brain burn in your gaming evenings, this one might just hit the spot.

Components, Production and Artwork

Opening the box, you are immediately greeted with a large technology board and a separate exploration board. Both are printed on thick, sturdy cardboard that feels built to last.

The game comes with a solid deck of cards: 46 technology cards divided over four levels, 20 event cards, a set of system cards for space exploration, and 10 achievement cards, although you only use four per game. The cards are bright, easy to read, and feel good in hand, not the kind that starts fraying after the second shuffle.

One detail we noticed is that the box proudly says “Made in Germany”, and honestly, it shows. The production quality feels just that bit sharper, a little more polished, the kind of finish you associate with German engineering, but thankfully without needing a PhD to assemble anything.

Each player gets two faction mats, one basic and one advanced, along with twenty resource cubes. These cubes are actually small dice that you turn to show different sides, depending on what they are representing at that moment. No rolling involved, so your precious space economy will not be ruined by an unlucky throw.

There are also coloured wooden discs and a player pawn in your colour, shiny ore crystals that act as your main resource, and a really useful two-sided player aid. Especially for your first few games, the player aids are a lifesaver.

The artwork, created by Franz Vohwinkel, keeps things clean and functional. You will not find dramatic galaxy scenes or neon explosions here. The player boards and tech cards are quite minimalist, but it fits the theme perfectly. In a game where clarity is key, the straightforward design does a great job of keeping the focus on the decisions rather than the distractions.

How It Plays

Beyond the Sun brings a lot of different ideas together into a game that feels surprisingly easy to get into. Every turn, you move your action pawn to a new space on the technology board and do whatever the action tells you to. At the start, your choices are pretty limited. You might research a new technology, build a spaceship, or just try to get your economy moving.

As the game goes on, the tech tree really starts to open up. Each new technology players discover adds new possibilities to the board, and before you know it, you are staring at a web of options that never seems to grow the same way twice. It feels a bit like building a civilisation, but without all the heavy bookkeeping.

At the same time, you are working quietly behind the scenes on your economy. Automating production, mining ore, growing your population. All the bits you need to make sure you can actually afford your shiny new technologies and those ambitious plans for galactic domination. And when you are ready, you can send your spaceships out onto the exploration board, moving between star systems and fighting for control of new planets.

While all this is going on, there is also a race ticking away in the background. Players are chasing after achievements, big goals that not only score points but also move the game closer to its end. It gives the whole experience a nice sense of urgency. You cannot just sit there polishing your perfect engine forever, even though it is very tempting.

One of the best things about Beyond the Sun is how many different paths you can take. Some players dive headfirst into science, racing up the tech tree to unlock the biggest powers. Others focus on building a booming economy, setting up a production engine so efficient that it practically runs itself. You might decide to go all in on military power, sending fleets out to grab control of the best systems. Or you might simply spread your influence as fast as you can, grabbing planets and stacking up bonuses before anyone else has even launched a ship.

Because the tech tree is shaped by the players during the game, no two sessions really feel the same. The best strategy is often the one you stumble into halfway through, not the one you had planned when you took your first move. Flexibility is everything. If you lock yourself into one path too early, you might find someone else has already built a faster route to victory while you are still busy upgrading your ore mines.

Choosing what to research also adds a sneaky bit of interaction. When you discover a new technology, you are not just opening up an option for yourself. You are making that action available to everyone else too. Sometimes the tech you research can steer the whole table in a different direction, which is both brilliant and slightly terrifying when you realise you have just handed your opponent the perfect move.

Keeping an eye on achievements is just as important as growing your economy. It is very easy to get stuck in a loop of endlessly perfecting your production engine, making everything smoother and shinier, but points win games, not beautiful factories. Knowing when to stop building and start scoring is crucial. Otherwise, you might end up with the galaxy’s most impressive machine… and nobody left around to care.

Advanced Options

Once you are comfortable with the basics, Beyond the Sun also offers a few ways to deepen the challenge.

If you want even more variety, the game offers advanced faction mats. Each faction can unlock two unique innovations during play, giving you special abilities that can really shake up your strategy. Unlocking them usually requires reaching certain production milestones, and if you drop below those thresholds, you can actually lose the bonuses again.

The advanced mats also change the structure of your ore production and supply tracks, making each faction feel distinct.

And for those who like even more control over their tech tree, there is an expert variant. Instead of drawing new technologies randomly, you set up a visible grid of future techs at the start. This way, players can plan their research paths more deliberately, bringing a bit more brain-burning goodness for the planners among us.

Final Thoughts

So, what is our take on Beyond the Sun?

We think it is a fantastic game for players who enjoy strategic depth, planning ahead, and making every action count. If you are a fan of games like Terraforming Mars or Gaia Project, you will likely find a lot to love here.

One thing that really stands out is how little luck there is once the game gets going. Your success is down to your decisions, not random chance, and that makes every victory feel properly earned. On the flip side, every mistake is also very much your own. No hiding behind bad dice rolls here.

The constantly changing tech tree gives the game a huge amount of replay value. No two games feel quite the same, and adapting to new situations keeps things fresh even after many plays.

If we had to nitpick, the artwork might feel a little plain compared to more visually flashy sci-fi games. It is not the kind of game where you will spend five minutes admiring the art on every card. But in return, you get a game that is clear, fast-paced, and easy to navigate. We will take functionality over fireworks any day, especially in a game that demands real focus.

All in all, Beyond the Sun delivers a smart, satisfying experience that keeps drawing us back to the table. Just remember, in space, no one can hear you overthink your next move.

If you want to try Beyond the Sun for yourself, you can also play it online on Board Game Arena.

📝 We received a review copy from Rio Grande Games.