Astromania: The Astronomy Card Game 2024

Greetings, researcher! Congratulations on making it to astronomy graduate school. You have been presented with the opportunity to contribute to professional astronomy research and add to the vast compendium of humanity's knowledge of the universe. You’ll be studying objects in space by collaborating with other astronomers, using cool new telescopes and tools, and getting a chance to publish your work in the prestigious Astromania journal.

Successfully ‘studying’ an astronomical object gives you Science Points (SP). These Science Points are your progress towards publishing papers and eventually getting your PhD. Studying an object is a combination of playing an astronomer and a tool card and rolling two dice. Matching icons between cards will give you bonuses on your dice roll. Just like real-life astronomy, a successful study relies on not only playing your cards right, but also a fair bit of luck!

By the end of an Astromania game session, you’ll probably learn something new about how astronomy research works, simply with skills as straightforward as icon matching! What’s more, all these icons are inspired by real study techniques astronomers use, detailed in the Glossary section of the game’s rulebook. Each object, astronomer, and tool card also has scientifically accurate descriptions meant to be a casual and quick read for those interested. You can use these as a guide to learn more about what happens behind the scenes of astronomy academic work as well as to learn something new about our universe!

—description from the designer