A Modern Reinvention of the Classic Galaxis Electronic Board Game
If you’re one of the few people who remember the Galaxis board game from 1980, then you’ll love this reincarnation by Jmrtns.
Galaxis is a fairly obscure two-player board game that challenges players to find missing spaceships on a grid board. The physical setup and gameplay are somewhat comparable to Battleship, but with the players competing to be the first to find all four missing spaceships. Critically, both players are trying to find the same four ships and so the game is computerized. When Ravensburger released Galaxis in 1980, that electronic functionality would have been very novel. It certainly left an impression on Jmrtns, who built this modern tribute to Galaxis.
To win Galaxis, a player must identify the coordinates of all four ships on a 9×7 grid. If the player guesses correctly, the game will confirm that fact. If the guess is completely wrong, the player won’t receive any further information. But if the guess is on the same line (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) as a ship, the game will say so. Because players take turns and can’t see their opponent’s boards, this enables some interesting strategic search methodology. It is impressive that Ravensburger was able to implement that electronic functionality affordably enough for a board game at the time, and Jmrtns wanted to do the same thing with today’s technology.
Fortunately, technology today is far more accessible than it was four decades ago and Jmrtns was able to achieve their goal with only a few components: A Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C3 development board, an Adafruit ANO rotary encoder (with breakout board), a 240×240 1.28” round LCD from Waveshare, and a speaker. Players use the rotary encoder to select the desired coordinates for their guess and get feedback through the LCD screen and speaker.
The game board is very reminiscent of Battleship, with a clamshell design that has storage space for pegs. Jmrtns designed the board to accommodate a single player and additional players compete with their own boards. Up to four players can race to see who is first to find all of the missing ships. As was true for the original Galaxis game, there is a pegboard for players to track their search. Total misses get black pegs, direct hits get white pegs, and orange pegs indicate if the ship is on the same line. The board and all of the pegs are 3D-printable. They look great and should hold up to many years of use.
Vintage Galaxis sets are hard to come by, so Jmrtns’s recreation is perfect for anyone that has fond memories of the game.