The Silver River Review

The Silver River is a 4X game that takes place in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, known in some Eastern cultures as The Silver River. The game includes Humans and different alien races, all of which some believe really exist in our galaxy. Races include:

• Greys
• Arcturians
• Reptilians
• Yahyel
• Nordics
• Insectoids
• Martians

Each race has unique special abilities that lend themselves to different play styles. The Deluxe Edition of the game adds the White Lions and the Cyborgs.

The Silver River was built to provide a rich 4X experience (Explore, Expand, Exploit & Exterminate), with all its trappings in under 2 hours.

Players will take the role of one alien civilization, and work to earn victory points through exploration, colonization, technology, civilization building, politics, war, and peace.

Unique gameplay elements include:

• Simultaneous Production and Resource Allocation: Gain raw production equal to your civilization’s population each turn, and then allocate it to your areas of choice during simultaneous Governing phases. Use your allocated resources to take actions.
• True Exploration: Explore planet-less sectors for rewards. Uncover mini-quests that can be completed for bonus rewards.
• Choose War, or Choose Peace: Players may enter any occupied sector without forcing war, players always have the option to attack, or not to attack, and may even agree to co-habitate planets together.
• Fast Tech Upgrades and Ship Movement: Move fleets of ships, whose size is not visible until they arrive, not individual ships. Upgraded technology applies instantly to all ships/planets/etc. This provides real progression in less time, and with less micromanagement.
• Ally Against Common Enemies: The center of the map is Sagittarius A*, a place where massive space monsters can be hunted for great rewards, on your own, or with other players.
• Choose Your Victory Conditions: Players will have the ability to choose their victory conditions before the game starts to ensure every player can play the strategies they love, and avoid those they dislike. (War, Explore, Cooperate, Negotiate, Technology, Civ Building, Politics, Production, etc)
• Unique Domestic Investment mechanic that provides resources and VP to players who pass early in an age to focus on their domestic agenda. This adds a thematic layer to the game and speeds gameplay up dramatically.

Again, gameplay is something I can’t comment on too much, and can only say how the solo mode went, which for me wasn’t great. There are 2 solo modes in the rules, and I have played both, and didn’t really enjoy either, and probably will only play once or twice more, just before playing in a group just to remind myself of the game play and the round actions etc.

The standard set up and game for me wasn’t balanced, and I’m not a fan of solo modes that just say ‘score a set amount of VP’s by the game end to win which this does, or defeat a level 5 monster.

The second solo mode is to defeat a monster of each level from 1 to 5, and if you ever lose a battle against any of these you lose the game.

Again, not a fan of this mode, and I found it to be ‘lazy’ in it’s objective, and not much thought had gone into it.

For me, I like solo modes where the AI player is controlled by cards, like those from Garphil Games, i.e. Raiders of the North Sea or Architects of the West Kingdom, or a board like Anachrony, the best solo mode of it’s type I have played.

Both solo modes in this, for me, showed a lack of effort in giving the player an all round experience when playing against others wasn’t an option, and I sincerely hope the designers revisit the game and add a better set of solo options asap.