Black Site Studios has now released their newest Dark Sci-Fi skirmish game, Kosmika. Inspired by the art of John Blanche, Adrian Smith and Karl Kopinski, alongside classic skirmish games of yesteryear, you'll dive in as Boilers looking for valuable salvage whilst danger rises all around you.

Kosmika Core Rulebook // Black Site Studios

Kosmika is played cooperatively by you and other Boilers but you could also play the game solo if you like. Each player will build a crew of three of these Boilers, hardened explorers and deep space salvage workers, who will then head deeper and deeper into a multi-level structure, facing whatever terrifying Hostiles you come up against.

Each game of Kosmika is different because what you face as you delve deeper will be unique to each "run". If you've played games like Lethal Company or extraction-style shooters, you'll have an idea of how this is going to play out. Kosmika has an element of push your luck in its design. Do you keep pushing down deeper to find better salvage, or will you cut your losses and run for the nearest airlock and escape?

Kosmika Preview // Black Site Studios

The game makes use of a d8 system based on a set of compact statistics for each unit in the game (Move, Smarts, Muscle, Health, Power, Armour). When you roll, you'll take several d8 based on your statistic and then look to hit a Target Number. Combat is resolved using an opposed roll.

If you'd like to see more about the game, you can watch Black Site's exploration of the game rules below...

Kosmika Gameplay // Black Site Studios

The Core Rulebook (shown above) features the rules for missions, combat, salvage extraction, airlocks and the behaviour of your hostile foes. You'll also get your rules for building a crew of Boilers, plus bosses, classes, factions and suits. You'll also find tables for weapons, gear, augments, rations and salvage.

There is also a set of mission generation tools which you can use for creating your dynamic objectives and structures. If you're a fan of campaign games, Kosmika also has rules for expanded play, including injuries, blight effects, transit finds, company bond tracks and ways to upgrade your crew quarters.

If you pre-order right now, you can also get some bonuses.

Kosmika Miniatures // Black Site Studios

You'll get a sprue of plastic Astronauts (enough to build ten miniatures) and a series of STL upgrade bits that you can use to customise the plastic kit. You'll also get STL files for your Hostiles that you'll need to play the game. You can, of course, dive into your miniature collection and just use whatever you have available.

Kosmika Terrain

Kosmika is played on a tabletop with a multi-level structure and so Black Site Studios has also built some terrain that you can use to represent the place you're heading to retrieve salvage.

Deep Space Structure 88 // Black Site Studios

Deep Space Structure 88 is a fully pre-painted kit that you can build to represent the three levels that you'll be descending through when playing games of Kosmika. You get walkways, walls, doors, ladders, plus tokens to represent salvage and airlocks.

As you might have seen in the video above, you can either choose to play Kosmika with the different levels stacked on top of each other or you could just set them all aside, especially if you're clumsy and can't fit your fingers into all of the gaps!

You can also get the Details Pack, which introduces more terrain elements to your games of Kosmika.

Deep Space Structure - Detail Pack // Black Site Studios

This comes with different elements like a broken ramp, barricades, explosive containers, consoles, acid pools and more. All of these are pre-painted and introduce some more character to your tabletops, working nicely to enhance your scenarios in Kosmika.

These kits are available separately or as part of a Kosmika Launch Bundle.

Kosmika Launch Bundle // Black Site Studios

Kosmika seems like great fun and another feather in the indie cap for Black Site Studios. I like how they are always coming up with small game ideas, inspired by both tabletop and video games. I think it helps that the artwork looks great for Kosmika, really helping to set the scene!

Are you going to be picking up Kosmika?