Why did the rats decide to race to the moon? Because they shared a belief that it is made from cheese. Do you have what it takes to become a true “rattronaut” capable of helping build and board this special flight? In this game, 1-5 players take on the role of a rat family working with others in their community, gathering parts to build a rocket to take them to the moon so they can feast on cheese forever.
The Main Board areas, paths, and scoring -
Worker Placement Paths: The main board contains three main worker paths that serve different purposes and use different movement tokens.
- The Nursery: The bottom-most board area contains the nursery path. Players move their burrowing token here to collect comics from the library, which provides various rewards, and two additional rats, which can be raised to use on the junkyard path above.
- Junkyard Path: Players start with two rats that they use to move up the junkyard path, where they collect resources such as tin cans, vinegar, cereal, calculators, and cheese to help build parts and fuel the rocket ship. Three special reward areas offer bottle caps and backpacks to gain resources and game-end points. When any rat reaches the rocket launchpad, they officially become a “rattronaut” and gain a reward of either a three-point end-game marker or immediately raising one rat from the nursery.
- Light String Path: Use your bulb-shaped marker to move up the light string track to increase resource income when your rats collect junkyard path rewards.
End Game Score Tracks – Players have cubes that they can place on eight different scoring tracks as they meet specific criteria, which yield points at the end of the game. These tracks are as follows:
Three scoring tracks require specific numbers and combinations of resources to create different rocket parts from items collected on the junkyard path. If a player has built all three parts for a rocket, they may place a cube on another track for completing a rocket ship.
Players can collect cheese on the junkyard path and each time they donate 10 cheeses for the flight to the cheese moon, they can place a cube on that track.
When a player’s light string marker reaches a construction light, they may place a score marker on the construction light score track.
On the nursery track, when a player’s marker reaches the space next to the stored food, they may place a marker on the stored food score track.
Finally, when any of your rats reaches the Launchpad and becomes a Rattronaut, place the rat on the Rattronaut score track.
In all cases, the first player to score points on each track will receive the most points, with descending point values for each placement until the track has no available scoring areas.
Game End: When a player moves their fourth rat onto the rocket launchpad or places their eighth cube on a score track, the end of the game triggers. Points are tallied for each of the eight score tracks, bottle caps, 3-point awards for boarding the rocket ship, and any leftover resources. The person with the most points wins!
The manual offers variable game set-ups and a solo mode. Game plays in 30-75 minutes, based on player count.