Two-Player Cosmic Encounter Prototypes

Future Pastimes began conceptual work on what we dubbed 2Player Cosmic Encounter years ago. Peter, Bill and Greg started prototyping on Tabletop Simulator, creating all the art and other components in Photoshop with existing Fantasy Flight templates. Here you’ll find ideas and elements that didn’t make it into production, or changed after playtesting.

51 2PLAYER ALIENS

Unfiltered ancestors from the minds of Peter & Bill

Notice there are 51 original 2Player aliens, but only 27 Duel aliens. Expansion sets, anyone?


2PLAYER ALIEN ALLIES

One of the big design challenges of Cosmic Encounter Duel was how to incorporate the concept of alliances into a two-player game. We began by calling them allies, which became envoys in Cosmic Encounter Duel. While the mechanics changed, the concept remained the same - You may summon an alien’s “relative” from Cosmic Encounter or one of the expansion sets for “a little help here!”


EARLY CARDS - COSMIC DECK & ESSENCE

We began with cards that were familiar to long time fans. Artifacts have been around in some form since the very beginning, (fun fact - they were called edicts in the original Eon Products version), and essence cards made their debut in expansion set six, Cosmic Eons.

While these prototype card decks were reorganized into a different deck scheme for Cosmic Encounter Duel, some of the best ideas ended up in the production game.

2Player COSMIC CARD DECK

2PLAYER ESSENCE cards

As in Cosmic Encounter Eons, 2Player essence cards were designed to expand the universe of powers into new realms. Six of the original 2Player aliens were assigned essence. Apothecary, Clairvoyant, Crop Circle, Inventor, Neurotic, and Quirk. Some of these ideas are pretty far out -all were fun to playtest!

PROTOTYPE GAME COMPONENTS

Some of the wacky bits and pieces we made in our prototyping.


Playtesters

Before we submitted our concept to Fantasy Flight, the fans contributed mightily to the 2Player Cosmic Encounter project. If you were a playtester, and would like to be featured with a picture, link, quote, (like Kirill), please contact us here. 

Kirill Krayushkin - featured playtester

Kirill Krayushkin 2Player.jpg

comments

“Testing the 2Player Cosmic Encounter was an extremely fun time, we couldn’t stop playing! :)

Big cheers to my stellar Cosmic friends from Moscow: if you read this, let's play Cosmic!”

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