Cosmic Encounter, an over 40-year-old board game, pins up to eight people against each other. Surprisingly, this competition-oriented game has created a community of companionship.
The objective of the game is to conquer five of your opponents’ planets, and keep the five planets that you have as your alien character.
Jaccob Masterson taking pieces out of Cosmic Encounter box.
Recently, I harassed my friends enough to convince them to play the game with me again. We started at around 9:00 p.m. and finished at around half past midnight.
I was first introduced to the game in middle school by a group of friends. We would all meet at the same friend’s house and play Cosmic Encounter along with other board games from late evening to early morning. It became a method of bonding.
“I enjoy it, because there’s a lot of strategy and deception involved,” Luke Hill says.
Luke is a dear friend of mine who I was introduced to the game with. He describes the typical environment of a Cosmic Encounter game as “hostile, toxic, and generally an unwelcoming place to be.”
Despite this description, he enjoys the game, because he enjoys lying to his friends. Cosmic Encounter is an outlet for players to blow off steam among friends.
Jacob Masterson, another close friend of mine who frequently plays the game, says he enjoys how the game unites the players through the common objective of obtaining five planets. He also points to the game’s high variability as a factor of its appeal.
The game can change every time it is played. At the beginning of every game, players choose from two randomly selected characters with special abilities. This random chance changes what is possible to happen in the game about every time. This keeps each play-through of Cosmic Encounter unique and interesting.
“This game is just fun. It’s even fun when you’re losing,” Jacob says.
For the particular friend group that Luke, Jacob, and I were a part of, there would be spans of months in which we did not see each other. Often when we did, we were playing this game, and we were just as close as the last time we saw each other.
The deceit, alliance, and betrayal that Cosmic Encounter incites among players develops a sense of intimacy.