Apparently “mlem” is a meme designating the noise a cat makes when it licks its own nose… and that’s just about enough internet for today, thank you.

Fortunately, Reiner Knizia’s MLEM: Space Agency, despite making my face feel moist every time I hear it, is one of the good doctor’s better dice games.

Outer space is lovely for a nap.

Okay, so the cats are going to outer space. MLEM isn’t especially interested in the particulars of what a feline space agency might actually look like — lots of naps, one presumes — but if there’s anything Knizia knows it’s numbers and probabilities. So while the playmat is cutesy, its planets and moons depicted as floating toys, balls of yarn, and bowls of goldfish, let’s set that to the side.

The real draw is the shared missions that players embark upon in their quest to explore the unknown. Every round begins with a single rocket ship. Everybody at the table loads a single kitty onboard, selecting which power they want to bring along on the mission. There are plenty to choose from, ranging from scoring bonuses for landing on a planet, moon, or the comet at the far end of the mat, to more utilitarian offerings like a satellite that gives the rocketship an extra boost, a backup die in case a roll goes poorly, or a parachute for evacuating a crashed shuttle.

And then the mission leader rolls. Rolls and rolls. The particulars are easy enough to grok, although of course Knizia is pulling a trick on unsuspecting players; there’s more to any given decision than might first appear. The gist is that the mission leader can choose how to use the results of each roll with two major caveats. One, if you choose a number then you need to spend every die showing it, blasting across the solar system but spending more dice than you might prefer. And two, you can only use numbers that are showing on your current space.

Choosing which catstronaut to send on the upcoming mission.

It’s a chancy press-your-luck game, of course, but those printed numbers offer some probabilities to calculate. Simple probabilities, all told, but when your ship is running on fumes it’s useful to know whether your odds are fifty percent or fifteen.

Which dice one opts to use is only the first decision. What comes next is more pressing. After breaking orbit, your ship will arrive at one of many viable destinations. Now everybody on the ship has the option, in player order, of ditching the mission to colonize whichever moon or planet you’ve arrived at. Sometimes this is an easy choice, especially if the mission leader has squandered most of their dice. You wave goodbye as you hop out of the ship and place your kitty on the nearest destination, either earning immediate points if it’s a moon or adding to an ongoing contest for majority if it’s a planet.

Like Knizia’s best games, MLEM isn’t only about probability. It’s also about psychological guesswork, and every single step of a mission is open to cajoling. As the round’s leader, you’re free to pressure other players into investing satellites or those extra dice on a mission. On the flipside, maybe you’ll instead plop the game’s “selfish kitten” onto the shuttle — a jerk move indeed, seeing as how it removes a die from the pool when that cat jumps ship. As soon as you take off, everybody is cheering or booing the dice, depending on their aspirations and whether they’re still along for the ride. While the mission leader gets final say in which dice to use, there’s nothing stopping you from browbeating an ineffective commander in the hopes that you’ll reach the destination of your choice. And, of course, there’s the whole “abandoning the mission partway through” thing. Nothing gets people talking like accusations of cowardice.

How does anything get done on these interstellar flights?

At times, MLEM threatens to become too rules-light, not to mention too dependent on the luck of the roll. Three optional modules help with that. The first is a collection of secret missions, the perfect way to prevent everybody from clustering onto the same planets. Next is a pile of exploration tokens that appear on specific spaces of the track, whether to propel you forward, regain a spent die, or award a point to the mission leader. While the optional missions are a must, this second module tends to trivialize reaching the outer planets and the comet beyond, but it sure feels good to soar once in a while.

The last and most impactful module introduces the UFO, a cutesy flying saucer (get it?) that gradually swoops closer to Earth and awards points to any mission leader that lands on its space. That same module also unlocks mission-specific expedition parameters, such as rolling fewer dice but earning one or two single-use numbers for saving your kibble when a roll doesn’t go your way. Because these are revealed before kitties are assigned to the rocket, these parameters also function as crucial (if deeply unreliable) tidbits of information. Does it seem like this mission will reach that planet you’ve been hoping to score? Then maybe load up the catstronaut that doubles planetary points. Conversely, if you’re certain a mission is going to crash and burn, why not deploy the parachute? That, too, can function as a psychological jab, causing others to abandon ship earlier than they might have otherwise.

And really, that’s the beauty of MLEM. Like some of Knizia’s classics, the rules are so light that they fade into the background almost immediately, letting you focus on the business happening above the table. This is a game that begs for animated players. If you don’t have them, it’s almost a sure thing that you will after about ten minutes.

Establishing the yarn mines.

Downsides? Sure. It’s a little long-winded. It’s also deeply reminiscent of Aaron Weissblum’s Cloud 9 and its remake Celestia. To such a degree, in fact, that one would be hard-pressed to argue that Knizia wasn’t riffing on Weissblum’s design. MLEM is the friendlier and more immediate of the two, tossing out points like they’re neck scratches. The inverse also happens to be true: Celestia is more toothsome, with tougher penalties for failure and longer odds to calculate.

I think I prefer MLEM. It’s the cats that do it. Haha, no, that’s a lie. It’s the ease. MLEM has functionally zero rules overhead. While it isn’t my favorite of Knizia’s designs by a long shot, it produces such a lovely time, with such gleeful highs and sputtering, easily forgotten lows, that I can’t help but enjoy myself. To the moon. And then a different moon.

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