Excursions shrinks Galactic Cruise to a weeknight, and seats six

Excursions: A Galactic Cruise Game is live on Kickstarter, and it is the follow-up a lot of my game group asked for without knowing it: the Galactic Cruise world, Ian O'Toole's retro space travel art, and a game that fits on a weeknight. Kinson Key Games is running the campaign through October 30. Ben Rosset designed it. It plays one to six. That last number is the whole story for me.

Quick note on what this is: a crowdfunding read, not a review. I have not played Excursions. I have played plenty of games that were great on a campaign page and fine on a table, so I am going to stick to what the publisher and early previews actually say.

The official Excursions site sets the scene on the Preston Space Station, where you are a cruise director building trips for guests while the big ships are still being built back on Earth. Everybody takes turns at the same time. The active player picks one of seven actions around the outside of the station, everyone does that action, and the active player gets a bonus whose strength shifts as the station rotates. The box says 60 to 90 minutes, ages 10 and up.

The active player picks the action and everyone follows. That is how you get six people through a Euro without anybody checking their phone.

GeekDad's prototype preview adds the details that matter for your wallet and your table. It describes a rondel action selection game with simultaneous play, a standard pledge at $39 and a deluxe edition at $59, and says the deluxe version upgrades to dual-layer player boards and wooden developments that are cardboard in the standard box. The game ends once somebody reaches 50 victory points. The reviewer also says a game runs roughly half as long as Galactic Cruise and takes up far less table, which, if you have tried to fit Galactic Cruise on a kitchen table, is basically a love letter.

Here is my take. Galactic Cruise is a big, deliberate worker placement game. People love it, and it is a commitment. Excursions looks like it was built for the other night of the week, when you have five friends, ninety minutes, and somebody who has never heard of Ian O'Toole. Simultaneous follow the leader action selection is a proven way to kill downtime, and the rotating bonus gives the active player something real to think about on their turn instead of just picking whatever helps them most. The risk is the flip side of that design: GeekDad flags that you will sometimes be stuck with an action you did not want. That is fine at four players. At six it could get spicy, in a good way or a frustrating one.

Galactic Cruise vs. Excursions, side by side

The Galactic Cruise column comes from GeekDad's 2024 campaign preview, and the Excursions column from the official site and the 2026 preview. Read it top to bottom and the pitch is obvious: same universe, same artist, a lower age mark, more seats, and less than half the entry pledge.

The campaign is not short on believers. Tabletop Analytics showed about $269,600 pledged against a $30,000 goal from roughly 2,160 backers as of Wednesday morning, with an average pledge around $125. That average tells you a lot of people are pledging well past the $39 box. My advice: decide what you want before you open the pledge manager.

It is a loud month for crowdfunding on the tabletop desk. Ragnarok Online's co-op crawler opened on Tuesday, Curseborne Covenant went live last week, and Eidolon: The Ghost Market is on deck for Daggerheart tables. Excursions is the one I would pitch to a group that does not usually back anything.

Who should back it? If you own Galactic Cruise and love it, this is a different itch, not a replacement, and the $39 standard looks like a low-risk way to scratch it. If your group runs five or six and keeps bouncing off heavy Euros, this is aimed right at you. If you only play two-player, I would wait for real reviews of how the rondel and the bonus feel with just two people pushing the station around.

How we made this: researched and drafted with AI assistance. Sources are linked in the piece.