Eclipse

A second edition, titled Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy was released in 2020 featuring revisions to the rules, graphic design, miniatures, and storage. The first edition is no longer being actively published.

• Title — Eclipse • Subtitle — New Dawn for the Galaxy • Italic Title — yes • Designer — Touko Tahkokallio • Illustrator — Ossi Hiekkala Sampo Sikiö • Publisher — Lautapelit.fi • Date — 2011 • Genre — Strategy • Language — English • Players — 2–6 (up to 9 with the Rise of the Ancients expansion.) • Ages — 14+ • Playing Time — 2–3 hours • Web — Lautapelit.fi: Eclipse

• Illustration — A game of Eclipse in progress Eclipse is a 4X strategy game where you must lead your civilisation to prevail over the others. Players can choose to play as either a human or alien civilization. On each move, a player takes one of six actions: building, exploring, influencing, moving, researching or upgrading. For example, exploring opens up a new tile in a direction chosen by the exploring player. Each action uses resources (money, materials or science), and resource management is a key part of gameplay. The galaxy is laid out in three rings of hex tiles, most of which get laid during exploration. At the start of play, only the galaxy center tile and tiles for the players' respective home stars are laid. When exploring, a player chooses a tileless space which is accessible from a star the player occupies. The player then draws a new hex tile from a stack of face-down tiles and lays it in the chosen direction. The player may strategically choose which orientation the tile takes, to create links to existing tiles or to block access by other players.

The adaptation of the board game, Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy, is a 4X video game developed by the Polish game company Big Daddy's Creations. It was released for iOS in 2013 and later ported to Microsoft Windows in 2016. The players take control of one of the races with the main goal of building an empire during a span of nine rounds. According to Metacritic, the game was received with "generally favorable" reviews and an average score of 87/100.