Collect a universe of points in the board game Point Galaxy

The latest sequel to Point Salad shoots for the stars.

By Keith Law | February 4, 2026 | 2:00pm

Images: Flatout Games

Games Reviews board games

Collect a universe of points in the board game Point Galaxy

Point Salad is a great small-box game that takes a derogatory term in gaming and turns into a slightly silly game of collecting salad ingredients and scoring combos. (“Point salad” refers to games with lots of ways to score points that aren’t well-connected in mechanics or theme—like word salad, but for board games.) The designers over at Flatout Games then brought out a sequel game, Point City, in 2023 that was a little more involved and not quite as magical as the original.

Now there’s a third game in the series, Point Galaxy, which does a better job of bringing back what made the original so good, not least of which is that it has a similar card-drafting mechanic that keeps the game moving quickly. Instead of collecting vegetables, you’re building a tableau of little solar systems, collecting sun cards, and then creating sequences of numbered planets beneath them, along with moons, asteroids, and the occasional wormhole to spice things up. The deck in Point Galaxy is, once again, double-sided, with planets on the light side and all of the other celestial objects on the dark side. (Makes me feel so crazy, makes me feel so meaaaannnnnn…)

In Point Galaxy, each player starts with a sun card that offers points based on specific colors of planets that are in its system at the end of the game. On a turn, the active player takes any two cards from the market, which has two rows of three cards apiece on their planet sides and one row of cards on their dark sides. You can place a planet into an existing system in front of you by adding it to the top or bottom of the column, as long as you maintain the numerical order you’ve already established. There are also planets marked X that serve as wild cards, while wormhole cards allow you to break the sequence and start a brand new one on the other side of the wormhole.

Point Galaxy board game

Some planet cards have one or two rocket symbols on them, while others have a research symbol and a letter from A to G on them. Once you get five rocket symbols, you can take a rocket scoring token from the table, which gives you a few extra points for something you might have, such as one point for every solar system you have with at least four planets in it. You do this again if you get to 10 rockets, 15, and so on. The research symbols score for set collection based on how many unique ones you have on your tableau at game end. Asteroids are the one item that scores in direct competition with other players, as the player with the most gets 10 points, second-most gets six, and so on. Moons go in between planets, with requirements for the colors of the two planets to which they’re adjacent. Solar systems earn points only if they have a sun attached to them—you can play planets separately, but you have to put a sun there to score it at the end. You get points for each solar system based on how many unique planet numbers are in it, similar to how the research tokens score.

As with Point Salad and to some extent with Point City, you tailor the cards you take to the bonuses and requirements on the cards (and later rockets) you already have. That makes turns very quick, because there will usually be at least one card that is an obvious move for you, and with higher player counts it can make for some real competition for specific cards because the odds are higher that someone else will have a similar bonus in play.

Where Point City made things more complicated in an attempt to make the game different enough from Point Salad, Point Galaxy leans into the best parts of the original. It tweaks a few aspects, like adding the sequencing part and the set collection scoring for entire card types, so it’s a smidgen more complex—although calling any of these games “complex” is like calling Oreos “fancy.” (Oreos are delicious, you don’t need to pretend they’re pôts de crème to get me to eat them.) It also gives people who liked Point Salad a new twist or two to play around with. I’d still recommend Point Salad first, but if you like that game and want something more, Point Galaxy is for you.

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