Sandy Petersen Announces 'Hyperspace' Board Game

Famed game designer Sandy Petersen has announced a new board game that puts players in charge of rival alien empires striving to conquer a new sector of outer space.

Hyperspace is billed as an asymmetric board game for 2-4 players designed the exploration and conquer of a newly discovered sector of outer space. Each alien civilization has its own path towards victory, which allows for radically different play styles during each game. Players can either choose to peacefully co-exist with each other on planets or battle against each other. The board is made up of different tiles, allowing for a different experience every time you play.

Petersen Games is raising funds to produce the game via Kickstarter, and it has already raised over $260,000 at press time. Petersen is a famous game designer, known both for his work on the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game and his level design work on video games like Doom and Quake. In recent years, Petersen has developed board games like Cthulhu Wars and most recently a sourcebook converting the Cthulhu Mythos for Fifth Edition D&D play.

When explaining the basic concept of the game on Kickstarter, Petersen noted that the alien designs in Hyperspace were inspired by his time studying zoology in college. Petersen noted that there's only one species of humanoids on Earth, so the aliens in Hyperspace are much more biologically diverse and exotic in design. Hyperspace's core set will come with four alien races, but the various expansions and add-ons will increase that number to 25 playable races.

The base set comes with 108 unpainted miniatures, 42 planet tiles, 24 dice, and everything else you need to play. Hyperspace's base game will cost $99. Backers of the Kickstarter can get the base game and an expansion containing 8 more alien races for just $69. A pledge of $299 or more will get players all the alien races, including a "secret" race that will be revealed later.

You can check out an explanation on how to play Hyperspace at the game's Kickstarter page.