Coriolis: The Third Horizon (2016) is the closest Free League’s got to a traditional science fiction game. By which I mean, instead of Star Trek and Star Wars as touchstones, the game’s key references seem to be the Arabian Nights, Dune, Mass Effect, Fading Suns and maybe a touch of Firefly. It is a moody universe, with great swaths of isolating emptiness, where forces known as Icons provide blessings and something lurks in the darkness between the stars.

It’s a Year Zero Engine game and probable most closely resembles Alien in terms of the basic mechanics here, though it isn’t a horror game (not really), so no Stress or Panic. Instead, when you call on an Icon, you gain a Darkness point that the GM can use down the line to complicate your life, using predetermined narrative moves. The hook (every Year Zero game has a unique hook) is the groups’ space ship(s). A big chunk of the rulebook is dedicated to building, modifying and maintaining the modular ships — it’s a pretty great base-building mechanic, deep but not too noodly, with lots of cool quirks you wouldn’t expect to find on a spaceship (greenhouses and shrines and stuff like that). Ship to ship combat plays out with every player manning a specific station, an idea derived from the old FASA Star Trek RPG and used to great effect here (the ships feels a good deal more like a home than in Trek).

The universe is unusual, with most of the cultural touchstones reflecting Middle Eastern and North African culture, but refracted through hundreds of years of further development in a new part of the universe. There is a clash of cultures between the original settlers who left last but arrived first via alien jump gates, and the new population that arrives on a cryoship (the titular Coriolis station is the seat of their power). Factions and plots abound. It is a rich setting that rewards exploration with many, many surprises — the whole line is top notch!