When it comes to board games, it isn’t always easy to tell the difference between a development and a regression. Take Galactic Renaissance, Christian Martinez’s followup to his supernal war-and-politics game Inis. On the surface, it covers much the same ground as that previous title, full of aggressive peacetimes, ill-advised conflicts that leave one poorer even in victory, and intersecting interests that are too testy to call alliances. Even the game’s geography, those far-flung planets only connected via warpgates, the way their abilities are contested and claimed, calls to mind the island terrain of its predecessor.

But this is no Inis. Despite riffing on many of the same ideas, Galactic Renaissance is a pockmarked experience, uneven in its best moments and frustrating and over-long the rest of the time. At its worst, it feels like a half-completed prototype for its predecessor.

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