Starlink Review
Growing up, laying out at night watching the stars was a favorite activity. Truly, one of the biggest perks of growing up in a small town in the country is that you see the sheer amount of beautiful stars in the sky, giving you ample opportunity to locate the many different constellations in the heavens.
If you’ve ever wanted to try your own hand at creating constellations, Starlink is the game for you!
What is Starlink?
Starlink is a new, light family game from Blue Orange Games where players will take turns drawing constellations on the board for their fellow players to guess.
At the start of your turn, you’ll draw a card that has two words on it. Choose one of these words to try and turn into a constellation on the dry-erase star board before the timer runs out. You can use as many stars as you’d like to draw your constellation, however, you must only draw straight lines connecting these stars together. Curves are not allowed.
Players may try to guess the constellation one at a time. (No rapid fire guessing allowed.) The correct guesser and the artist both receive points for the constellation. Points are awarded based on how many stars are on the card, 1, 2, or 3, and if the constellation was small enough to fit inside the telescope then the players earn one extra point.
Players keep correctly guessed constellations on the board for the duration of the game. Unguessed constellations are erased and removed.
Once each player has been the artist twice the game ends.
What do we think?
The world of Pictionary style games is large and Starlink plays, more or less, quite similarly as any of the others.
It is a very simple game yet provides even the best Pictionary artists a new challenge: Straight lines only. It is surprisingly difficult to draw without the use of curved lines. Even more to draw by needing to connect stars together to make your image.
We found it to be a very enjoyable challenge to try and draw this way. How do you draw a backpack without curved lines? Or ice cream? This not only requires creativity of the artist, but also open mindedness of the guessers. Everyone needs to be willing to think of these shapes in a different way. This element provided us with both a lot of laughs and impressive oohs and aaahs when a player drew something really well, even if it wasn’t guessed.
I thought that it might end up being too difficult but honestly worked quite well for everyone. This is a great family game. We played a three generations game with the youngest player being 8 and everyone had a great time. This is a game that I consider more of an activity where you just play until you want to stop. While we kept score, we really just played until we wanted to stop. In our four player game, we played for over 45 minutes and I lost track of how many times we were each the artist. Far more than the suggested 2 in the rules.
I love how the restrictions on drawing actually make the game more accessible for players who may not be inclined to play other drawing games due to a self perceived lack of drawing ability. You don’t have to be a gifted artist to be a great constellation creator here! It really leveled the playing field.
We all really enjoyed the challenge that the telescope brought. While it wasn’t always possible, trying to draw your image in a smaller, tighter space to get that extra point requires you to think even more creatively.
The star board is absolutely stunning. Blue Orange Games makes some of the most beautiful games around (hello Planet!) and this board looks fantastic. Even more so when you start filling it in with constellations.
I love that you leave the images on the board until the game is over, it really creates a fantastic look and even makes it more challenging as stars can’t be reused.
The white dry-erase markers work really well and show up bright on the board. The draw back of any game that involves dry erase markers though is that eventually they dry out. The ink in these white markers does dry out quickly, so you’ll want to make sure you put the cap back on in-between each drawing. You won’t want it sitting uncapped and exposed to the air.
The ink also dries quite hard on the eraser part. After a couple games our erasers were a bit hard and somewhat sticky so we just use tissues to erase the board after playing.
Due to the nature of scoring, you need 3 people to play this game the proper way. However, Adam and I have played this just the two of us and had a great time. We just took turns drawing like normal, filling up the board, and kept the cards we drew correctly for a fun scoring element when we decided to stop. (more for bragging rights than anything else!) It made for a wonderfully relaxing evening!
Summary
Starlink is a very light, fun drawing game for the family. It is simple to play, you can learn it in about 30 seconds, yet provides a fun twist to the many drawing games it resembles by requiring the use of only straight lines connecting stars. While more difficult than you might expect, it still manages to stay simple enough to entertain players both young (7+) and old.
Regardless of artistic ability, anyone can have a good time playing Starlink. It’s a great family game and one I suggest checking out if you enjoy lighter party games or love games where you get to draw.
A special thank you to the great folks at Blue Orange Games for sending us a copy of Starlink for review. Visit their website for a look at their full gaming line up and to purchase your own copy of Starlink.
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Game Info:
Title: Starlink
3-6 Players Ages 8+
Designer: Markus Slawitscheck, Arno Steinwender
Artist: Gaëtan Noir
Publisher: Blue Orange Games
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