The Best Board Games Set on Jupiter 2026

Terraforming Mars is a strategic board game set in the 2400s, where players, representing giant corporations, embark on the colossal task of terraforming Mars. Sponsored by the World Government on Earth, each corporation competes to contribute most effectively to raising the planet's temperature, oxygen level, and ocean coverage to make Mars habitable. While players work together in the terraforming process, they also compete for victory points awarded for their contributions to terraforming, advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and other notable achievements.

Players are companies specializing in sending settlers to colonize the universe. They recruit settlers on Earth, transport them to Mars, and then to Ganymede, where the settlers' ships are launched. The game ends when a player has sent four settler ships into space, earning victory points for their launched ships and reputation.

Players take turns choosing to use markers or dice on the board. By rolling the dice and placing them down, players earn points by arranging their markers in straight lines, either horizontally or vertically, to the dice. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins when the board is full.

Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, teems with alien marine life deep beneath its crust. Colonists arrive regularly, including pioneers, engineers, marines, and stewards, who work to establish sustainable communities and explore the labyrinthine oceans. The game combines dice placement and machine building as players gather resources, construct buildings, and embark on expeditions while competing against each other and the environment.

Thirty years after the first colonial ships were sent from Ganymede, humanity has decided to launch Project Galileo. Its goal is to settle the four main moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) to expand human presence in the solar system. Players take on the roles of the companies involved in events on Ganymede, recruiting robots from Earth and Mars, enlisting experts, developing technologies, and constructing buildings.

Players build a space station on Ganymed, a moon of Jupiter. Tom and Dave take turns placing tubes and navigating through them or space. The winner is the astronaut who collects more valuable pieces and returns to their base faster using their solar counters. The game features a unique tessellation of rhombuses and triangles, creating a complex web of paths in space.

In the near future, nanofabrication techniques will allow for the creation of incredible new materials atom by atom, but only in the conditions of weightlessness and high vacuum in space. Players act as Earth’s governments racing to establish a functioning space program, gathering resources and colonizing other planets, moons, and asteroids. Water in low Earth orbit serves as currency for bidding on space-related patents, while players must balance the weight and maneuverability of their spacecraft to succeed.