This week, we started with a game that's a few years old that I still hadn't played. Space Dealer is a simultaneous-play game, where you carry out actions by placing a 30 second-timer on the item and once the sands of time have run through, you produce the resource, build the technology or land your spaceship at its destination. Players are seeking to improve their planets' capabilities, produce resources and deliver them to planets where there is a demand for those resources, thereby gaining victory points. After exactly thirty minutes, the game ends (a CD soundtrack acts as a countdown timer). Furthest along the VP track wins.

The game seemed quite frantic, even though you only have two actions you can be working on at any time and each action takes 30 seconds. None of us really knew what the best strategy was, although improving technology level early on seemed obvious. Mark K then built a megacity or two which attracted his neighbours, while I on the other side of the universe could only look on while the spaceships with all the precious resources on them headed away from me. Steve pushed Mark quite hard but didn't quite catch him as, after the 30 minutes was up, Mark K was a couple of VP spaces ahead.

We all thought the game ok and it was certainly playable but nothimg really stood out to make it memorable. The sand timers were a fairly innovative feature but the rest of the package didn't really offer anything special. And setting the game up and going through the rules took longer than the game itself.