Wouter & Ymke 
(or why we kind of stopped setting up SETI without it)
If you’ve been paying attention to board games over the last few years, you probably know SETI. And if you don’t… well, I guess you’ve been busy doing other good things in life. Since late 2024 it’s been everywhere, picked up awards, climbed into the BoardGameGeek top 20, and somehow managed to be both complex and widely played. Recently, the first expansion showed up: Space Agencies.
SETI was always about planning, patience, and slowly building something that works. Space Agencies doesn’t undo that, but it does change how the game feels from the very start. It adds organizations, each with their own way of doing things, and suddenly the game feels more direct. Less warming up, more getting stuck in.
Instead of everyone beginning more or less the same and figuring things out along the way, you now start with a clear angle. You’re not just doing science anymore. You’re doing it your way. And yeah, sometimes that means committing before you’re fully sure it’ll work out. Which, honestly, feels pretty on theme for space research.
👥 1-4 players, ages 14+
⌛ Playing time: 40 minutes/player
📝 Designer: Tomáš Holek
🎨 Artwork: Ondřej Hrdina, Jiří Kůs, Jiří Mikovec, Jakub Politzer & Petr Štich
🏢 Publisher: Czech Games Edition (review copy provided)
Overview of the base game
In SETI, you run a space exploration agency and try to outscore the others over five rounds. You launch probes, scan nearby stars, gather data, research technologies, and, obviously, discover alien life. On your turn, you take one main action and any number of free actions, until you decide you’re done for the round.
The board shows the Solar System in the center and nearby star sectors around it. You launch probes from Earth, move them through space, and turn them into orbiters or landers to gain resources, points, and life traces. At the same time, you’re scanning star sectors with telescopes, marking signals to collect data and compete with other players.
That data can be analyzed on your personal board to mark life traces linked to alien species. Each game includes two unknown alien species, hidden at the start. Once the right traces are marked, a species is discovered, new rules appear, and the game shifts a bit.
You also research technologies, complete missions, and build income by tucking cards under your income board. Scoring comes from many places: sectors, aliens, missions, tech, and end-game scoring tiles. After five rounds, you count everything and see who did best.
Gameplay overview of the Space Agencies expansion
With Space Agencies, each player gets an organization. That organization gives you a passive ability, a once-per-round free action, and some starting resources or effects. These don’t add new systems, but they do change how you approach the existing ones. You can do more early, and sometimes you’re pushed to lean more into certain actions.
Because of that, games with organizations are played over four rounds instead of five. You skip the first round completely and only play rounds two through five. That sounds like a big change, but once you’ve played it, it’s hard to go back.
Setup also changes with Quick Start cards. Each player chooses two and resolves them at the same time. The top half usually tells you to place orbiters, signals, or life traces on the board, but you don’t get anything for that yet. The bottom half then gives you resources, points, or effects. It all happens before the first round begins.
The expansion adds three new alien species, shuffled in with the originals. As usual, only two are used per game. They follow the same discovery process, but each brings its own rules and rewards. For us, that meant games kept feeling different without needing to relearn anything.
Signal tokens are the last addition worth mentioning. You can gain them from certain cards, organizations, or alien effects. During a scan action, you can discard them to discard extra cards from the card row and place extra signals. You can only use two per scan, because of how the card row refills.
Artwork, components, and table presence
If you’ve played the base game, nothing here will surprise you visually. The expansion fits in naturally.
The colors, icons, and space imagery all match what was already there. Organization cards contain a lot of information, but it’s laid out clearly enough. Quick Start cards are easy to resolve during setup, which matters more than it sounds. Component quality feels the same as the base game, which is good news. No corners cut here.
Our experience
Space Agencies feels like a more focused version of SETI rather than a heavier one. In the base game, the first round often feels like preparation. You’re building income, launching a probe, or starting a scan loop. Space Agencies removes that round and replaces it with a setup that gets you to the same place, just faster.
For us, that worked really well. The game starts with players already doing things that matter. Even with fewer rounds, the game never felt thin. If anything, the choices felt more concentrated, and turns mattered more.
Scanning becomes even more important with the expansion. It was already central, but signal tokens push it further. Being able to trade cards for extra signals increases competition over sectors. Timing matters more, and finishing a sector at the right moment feels more important.
The new alien species helped keep things from feeling samey. You don’t quite know what kind of rules you’re about to uncover, and that uncertainty still works, even after several games.
One thing we really noticed was game length. With Space Agencies, playtime was more predictable, and we stopped checking the clock halfway through. For groups that like to think things through, that matters.
Our thoughts
I already liked SETI a lot, and for me, Space Agencies adds something I don’t really want to give up. Not because the base game needed fixing, but because this version fits how we like to play. For us, that means we probably won’t play it anymore without this expansion.
This isn’t only a “more stuff” expansion. It changes how the game starts and how quickly it proves what kind of game it’s going to be. Organizations and Quick Start cards reshape the opening turns enough that the whole flow feels different.
That said, it won’t be for everyone. If you really enjoy the slow build-up of the base game, you might miss that first round. Also, the asymmetry can feel uneven in early plays. Some organizations feel stronger until everyone understands how they work. That can be a bit frustrating at first, I know.
Signal tokens are a good example of what the expansion does right. They’re easy to explain, don’t add much overhead, and still change how players interact around scanning and timing.
For me, Space Agencies feels less like an optional add-on and more like an alternative way to play SETI once you know the base game. It speeds things up, adds variety, and keeps the core intact. And I guess that says enough on its own.
📝 We received a copy of the game from Czech Games Edition.
