Very Briefly

Twin Stars (Jason Tagmire, Mike Mullins) is a collection of different dice-based mini games themed around a space world, and you navigate the little story of each game using two characters, each represented by a card with unique stats and powers, selected out of a truly varied stable of characters.

The heart of the game is choosing two characters and seeing how they interact to achieve (or not) the goals in mini games that stretch across multiple genres and play styles, from action adventure in miniature to political scheming.

This is a solo game, but it could also be played co-op for two with one player taking a character each.

Briefly

You don’t need much to get going with a mini game session.

  • The common rules are pretty simple and come with a little chart for when different ability types can happen.
  • Grab two character cards, one scenario card, four d6 dice, and some small tokens – 8mm to 1cm cubes work, as will 3/4 inch bingo chips.
  • Review your characters: note their health, what symbols or abilities they have for each of the six die values, their skill check ranges, and their special action.
  • Read the scenario rules, and note which symbol combos will result in which results, as well as any set up.

After this, it’s dice chucking action. I really like the simple dice manipulation system, which I haven’t seen elsewhere, and it combines very well with every character doing something unique yet concise for each die value.

Like all dice manipulation, you need to make choices – but I really love that when you do a reroll, you must choose one die to stay with a character and decrease its value by one. This means you don’t get the easy choice of just choosing the best of your current two options and rerolling the other die – what you don’t reroll still changes the state of the game. That aspect by itself leads to interesting choices.

Your evaluation of what’s good in a game session will also vastly change with different pairs of characters, in conjunction with the unique rules and mechanisms of every scenario.

Basically, Twin Stars is a dice rolling toy box, and that variety is its joy. I think of it as: what if Cosmic Encounter, Rolling Realms, and Douglas Adams joined forces to create little mini games for those times you need a fanciful and truly chaotically varied filler.

Extra Stuff

There’s extra free stuff if you’re fine with PNP!

  • Droid helpers, two sets of three droid mini cards. Choose one to add to a game session to help – at a cost – your two characters.
  • Syzygy I and II: Two sets of different campaign rules that allow you to assemble a number of scenarios into mini branching, rather episodic stories.
  • Captain Cragg, a PNP Arcade exclusive character.
  • Optional specialized tokens, which can work well with small bingo chips if you truly wish.

You can find the rules for Syzygy I and II on BoardGameGeek, Captain Cragg and the optional specialized tokens on PNP Arcade, and the Droid helpers in the Button Shy discord in the pins of the twin-stars channel.

(Thanks to user Pamponiros on Discord for catching our miss on Captain Cragg!)

Lục bát

Catch-22 in space;
Mini stories alongside these
Mini pre-made PCs,
A D6 system non-obtrusive –
!!
Now wait just a minute!
Is Twin Stars a light pub dice chucker
Or a smol one-off solo
Adventure module machine?