Theme : You are in a Race for the Galaxy in this science-fiction card game. Multiple paths to victory are available, from exploring Alien Worlds, fermenting a Rebellion and Military State or developing a Leisure and Mining empire. It is all up to you, but you will need to make sure to use your opponents decisions as best you can.

Race for the Galaxy's development began when Thomas Lehmann started work on a card game version of Puerto Rico in parallel with Andreas Seyfarth's own card game that became San Juan. Their independent efforts resulted in some degree of collaboration. With San Juan published first, Thomas Lehman took his resulting game to and incorporated a well thought out space theme to complete Race for the Galaxy.

Gameplay : Race for the Galaxy is a card game where players must develop the worlds and galaxies to generate victory points. The player with the highest victory points at the end of the game wins. Victory points are gained either during the game (through the consumption of goods produced on their planets) or at the end of game via the points on cards played. Each turn, players simultaneously choose from a specific set of actions; each action benefiting both the player who chose it and all other players. This a mechanic taken from Puerto Rico, though in this case, the actions are chosen in secret and simultaneously played out in a specific order.

It should be noted, that like Puerto Rico and unlike San Juan, this is not a light weight game to learn. There are a large variety of cards with a number of actions and abilities that interact with one another, providing a complex array of strategies. As such; for beginners, both the usage of icons to describe the various abilities on the cards as well as the complexity of the cards offered make it a difficult game to learn and succeed in quickly. However, for those gamers who enjoy deep strategy games, Race for the Galaxy has quickly climbed the rankings.