In Celestia, you board an aircraft with a team of adventurers to perform many trips through the nine cities of Celestia and recover their wonderful treasures. During your trips, you and the rest of the adventurers will face threatening storms, lightning, Lockhars pirates, Damok-birds and many more challenges!
The game is suitable for aged eight and above, and is for two to six players. It makes a nice party game or travel game as it’s compact and fun to play together! It is available to buy from Esdevium store finder RRP £20.99 and Amazon.
Inside the box, it comes with 1 aircraft, 6 playing pieces with tiles, 9 oval ‘City’ tiles, 4 dice, 68 Equipment cards, 78 Treasure cards and instructions.
To play the game, start by placing the 9 ‘City’ tiles in ascending order and place treasure cards to the ‘City’ tiles. All players place their pawns within the aircraft on the first ‘City’.
For beginners, you can remove the ‘Power’ cards from the equipment cards and Magic spyglass from the Treasure cards as shown on the picture below.
Each player starts the game with six cards in their hand (or eight cards for 2-3 players). One player is chosen to be the captain of the trip and he/she rolls 2-4 dice to discover the challenges that they will face: fog, lightning bolts, killer birds, or pirates. He/she must then play the appropriate cards – a compass, a lightning arrester, a foghorn, or even cannons – to continue on the journey and reach the next city.
But before the captain plays the appropriate cards, each player must decide whether to stay within the aircraft or exit to the city. If you exit, you’re guaranteed the victory points that come from exploring the current city. If you stay on board, you hope to make it to the next city in order to catch more precious treasures. If the captain can’t overcome the challenge, though, everyone comes crashing down empty-handed and you’ll need to begin a new trip with all passengers on board.
For expert level, each adventurer can try to pull out of the game with fabulous objects (a jetpack, astronomy glasses, etc.) or by changing the trip (modifying the travel or abandoning an explorer in the city).
As soon as a player earns treasure worth at least fifty points, the game ends and this player wins.
In my video, I explain how to set up and play the game. Do check it out: https://youtu.be/zT2aztb6vRE
We all enjoy this game and find the concept very interesting. We love to travel to city to city and to decide whether to entrust our passage to our fellow captains or disembark. This is definitely very different from the usual board games out there. I would definitely recommend them.
Disclosure: We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review however all thoughts and opinions remain our own. We have included an Amazon affiliate link to the product. If you click on this and buy, we may earn a small commission.