Remember Xia: Legends of a Drift System, that sandboxy romp through outer space that didn’t really cotton to skilled play, but felt great anyway? Dog Star Shippers, the diminutive title by Sam Pugh, operates like a downscaled version of that game. It’s chancy, silly, and offers a pleasant way to pass an hour.

Jumpin’ around the Sirius System.

Welcome to the Sirius System. Some time back, humanity moved right in, settling the many planets and moons that orbit the Dog Star. Now mercenaries, deep-space shippers, and factions of all stripes dart between points of light, swapping goods and laser fire.

It’s a classic setup, and Pugh is quick to make it his own. What Dog Star Shippers lacks in color, it makes up for in factional dynamics and sturdy press-your-luck gameplay. Your goal — once again invoking Xia — is to accumulate eight points of valor, whether before your opponent in the two-player game or before an automated rival chalks up enough points of their own. There are a few sources of valor, hitting the usual notes. The map begins with three destinations but soon unveils more, with some of them awarding valor to whomever charts a route to them. Meanwhile, better ships are obviously more valorous, prompting players to spend their hard-earned credits on upgrades. Credits are also worth valor, by the way, so there’s a tradeoff to consider whenever you want to splurge on a bigger freighter.

The final source of valor is missions, optional quests that can be purchased at stations. These add parameters to your expeditions, usually by adding more cards to your threat pile — more on that in a moment — but sometimes requiring you to engage a particular faction’s ships, arrive at a certain destination, haul cargo, keep your hull intact, that sort of thing.

Regardless of whether you’ve undertaken a mission or not, each turn revolves around a single excursion. Basically, you’re picking a destination and loading yourself up on encounter cards to form that threat pile. Then you outfit your ship, a brisk task that comes down to setting your weapons and engines and maybe buying some cargo, and you’re off. One by one, you flip the cards in your threat pile. These function a little bit like the dangers in Galaxy Trucker, spelling out dangers and decisions. Maybe a friendly ship happens by; no big deal, you can fly past without fear. Or perhaps it’s a pirate, who will attack only if you’re carrying cargo. Or asteroids, which depending on the size of your ship will inflict damage. In some cases, you’re given a choice: flee by burning engines or engage in a dogfight, using up your weaponry charges to maybe steal some credits.

All systems are a go.

It’s no surprise that Dog Star Shippers is at its best when it’s offering those choices, little branching risks that can quickly threaten your overall voyage, especially when you’re facing ten or more encounters in sequence. Your success or failure often rides more on your preparations than on anything that happens during the actual expedition. Did you sufficiently juice your engines? Load up on risky cargo? Make pals with the wrong faction? Take on a mission when the starlanes were already under threat? It’s a game that peer pressures you to take big swings, accepting missions at the wrong time and hoping they pay off rather than leaving you begging for someone to tow you back to base.

For a game that’s sixty-ish cards, it’s also surprisingly evocative. Don’t get me wrong, there are all sorts of places where it might have offered more depth. The faction system is interesting, providing certain stations with benefits and heaps of encounters that will go better or worse depending on your current alignment, but there’s also a sense that all sides are created roughly equal. What’s the difference between the Mining Guild and the Pirate League? One’s orange and one’s pink. Beyond that, each of the game’s four factions are just as liable to harass me when I’m out and about. There are differences, but they’re minor enough that they fade into the starry backdrop.

Still, it’s hard to imagine packing much more into Dog Star Shippers without compromising the brevity of its vision. This is a compact product, just a few tokens and a deck of cards. Given that size, it punches above its weight. At heart, this is a press-your-luck game. Your goal is to run along the razor’s edge, dragging as much profit from each run as possible without flaring out.

That’s also what makes it worthwhile. When it comes to small solitaire games, I’m interested in “process” games, those that set up quickly and keep the rules light enough that I can quickly settle into the zone. Here that zone is about moving cards: selecting the right missions, building and assessing a pile of encounters, ripping through a bunch of threats and hopefully coming out the other side intact. For that reason alone, the solitaire game works where the two-player game is something of a drag. I want to shuffle cards and make lightning-fast decisions, not resolve somebody else’s encounters. When Dog Star Shippers gets moving, it feels good on the fingertips; the same can’t be said when it steps beyond solo play.

Evading threats. Or blowing them up.

Like I said, it’s a pleasant way to pass an hour, just absorbing enough that it calms the nerves without numbing them. In that way, it reminds me of some of John Clowdus’s solitaire games, more preocccupied with the delight of moving and assessing cards than with any particular innovation. For a game about dodging pirates and hauling cargo, it’s surprisingly cozy. My kind of stellar legend.

Dog Star Shippers is available on The Game Crafter.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi.)

A complimentary copy was provided.