Game intel
Zenith
Step into a dark and decaying world with Zenith, an Action RPG that blends intense combat, deep exploration, and an immersive atmosphere. Explore ruined cathed…
The first time I put Zenith on the table, I honestly thought I’d made a mistake.
Here’s this shiny winner of the 2026 As d’Or “Initié” award, from PlayPunk (the folks behind the super-approachable Captain Flip). The box promises a 30-minute, 2-4 player game where Humans, Robots and Animods compete to control a futuristic Senate across five planets. It looks like a welcoming, mid-weight strategy game. The rulebook is short. The turns seem simple.
And yet, in that first two-player match, my partner and I spent more time squinting at icons than actually thinking about strategy. Every card was a tiny puzzle. Every turn, someone was reaching for the player aid. We finished, looked at each other, and said: “That was… interesting? Let’s run it back.”
By the third game, something clicked. The icons stopped being hieroglyphs and became tools. The central “planet tug-of-war” opened up. We started seeing the tempo swings, setting up long-term plays on the tech tracks, and timing those brutal leadership grabs. That’s when Zenith went from “clever curiosity” to “okay, this might live on our shelf for a long time.”
If you’re looking at Zenith because of the As d’Or buzz or because you spotted it on Board Game Arena: yes, there’s a good reason it’s getting attention. But you need to know what you’re signing up for. This is a sharp, two-player-first tactical game wrapped in dense iconography and eco-conscious components made from RE-Wood. It rewards patience, punishes distraction, and really doesn’t care if you liked Catan.
The core of Zenith is disarmingly simple. Between the players sits a clean, mostly white board with five planets in a central row. Each planet belongs to one of three peoples: Humans, Robots, or Animods. On your turn, you play exactly one card from your hand, and you choose just one of three things to do with it:
You’re juggling two resources: credits and energy. Agents cost credits. Tech advancements cost energy. Leadership doesn’t cost resources, but you’re effectively sacrificing a card’s other potential uses for a short-term punch and a bigger hand in the future.
The game ends when someone earns influence in one of three ways:
“Controlling” a planet means you’ve tugged it off the center and fully into your side. When that happens, you take an influence token and the planet slides back to the middle, ready for the next round of fighting over it. Think of it like a shared row of sliders you’re constantly nudging back and forth.
My first impression after a couple of turns: this is basically a sci-fi, three-faction version of a tug-of-war game like Air, Land & Sea, except with way more levers to pull. The interesting part is that every card can push on multiple systems, and you’re constantly tempted to use it for the “wrong” thing because of the immediate situation on the board.
Example from a mid-game situation: I had a powerful Animod agent in hand, color-matched to a planet that would swing entirely into my camp if I recruited them. Easy choice, right? But I was also one step away from a juicy level on the Animod tech track that would give me a permanent discount. Developing that tech meant not pulling the planet, but it would make future turns much stronger. Meanwhile, my opponent had just taken Human leadership, gaining an extra card in hand and threatening a multi-planet swing.
In that moment, what looked like three basic actions actually felt like a small crisis of identity: am I the player who takes the safe, visible point now, or the player who gambles on long-term snowballing? Zenith lives in those tiny crises, every single turn.
Here’s the part that will make or break Zenith for a lot of people: the iconography is dense, and it isn’t intuitive out of the box.
If you’ve played icon-heavy games like Race for the Galaxy or even Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition, you know the drill: your first game is mostly spent decoding symbols. Zenith leans hard into this approach. Almost everything is conveyed via small icons: move a planet, gain credits, gain energy, discount a cost, trigger an effect when recruiting, trigger another when using leadership, track-specific bonuses, etc.
The good news is that the player aid is actually solid. It clearly summarizes what each icon means and how the three peoples differ in their style. The bad news: there are a lot of them, and many symbols mash together on a single card. In my first two sessions, our table talk sounded like this:
“Wait, does this trigger when I recruit or when I discard it for leadership?”
“Is this planet icon with a plus sign moving any planet, or just the matching color?”
We misplayed abilities, forgot ongoing tech effects, and had to rewind turns more than once. One friend straight-up bounced off the game after a single play, saying “I get that it’s smart, but I don’t want to learn another language.”
By game three, though, the icons started to sink in. Certain shapes and colors became shorthand in our heads. The factions each developed a personality in our minds: Robots felt like efficient optimizers, Humans more balanced, Animods more swingy and opportunistic. The card powers stopped being obstacles and turned into possibilities.
If you’re willing to treat the first one or two games as paid tuition, the payoff is absolutely there. But I wouldn’t bring Zenith as a casual “let’s teach this to my non-gamer cousin” title. This is firmly in that “initiated” sweet spot the As d’Or category is meant for: people who know modern board games and are okay wrestling with a system for a couple of nights before it opens up.
Zenith is officially a 2-4 player game, but after a bunch of sessions in both configurations, I’m comfortable saying this: it’s a two-player game first, and a four-player game second.
At two players, every single action feels sharp. There’s almost no downtime: you play a card, your opponent plays a card, planets shift, tracks climb, resources move. Because you’re directly facing off, reading the other player’s plans becomes part of the fun. You see when they’re investing in a long Animod tech engine, and you can lean into Robots to out-tempo them instead of matching their plan.
One of my favorite moments came in a tense two-player game where we were both one influence away from victory. I’d focused on collecting different planets, my opponent had doubled down on a single world and was about to claim it for the third time. I had the leader token, meaning one extra card in hand, but I was behind in raw economy.
That extra card gave me just enough flexibility to chain a cheap recruit (nudging a planet toward me and reducing future costs) into a tech upgrade on a later turn that made my next agent free. Over three turns, what looked like a lost cause became a sudden one-two punch: I claimed my fourth distinct planet while my opponent was still lining up what they thought was their inevitable third capture of their pet world. We both laughed, but it was a very “you should have seen this coming” sort of laugh.
That kind of tempo play, reading and misreading, is far more vivid at two. Everyone sees the same cards and planets; there’s no one to hide behind. The game length is also perfect here: around 30-40 minutes once you know the icons, snappy enough to play twice in an evening but rich enough that the second game feels very different from the first.
At four players, Zenith switches to a team format (2 vs 2), which works mechanically, but stretches things out. You get longer gaps between your turns and more chaos from multiple brains pulling planets and racing up tech tracks. Our four-player games often ran close to an hour, and while they weren’t bad, they didn’t feel tighter or more strategic than the two-player duels; just longer.
If your group loves team talk and you enjoy a bit of table chaos, the four-player mode is fine. For my taste, though, it diluted what Zenith does best: that constant tug-of-war tension where you’re always a little scared of what the one other person at the table is about to do.
Zenith’s production hits a sweet spot between clean usability and distinct personality, with one big caveat: the icons will dominate your first impression.
The board design is refreshingly airy. Lots of white space, clear zones, and five prominent spots for the planets in the middle. It never feels visually cluttered, which is crucial when you’re already parsing heavy iconography. Turns play out in that central row; the tug-of-war is always visible, which really helps newer players understand who’s actually ahead.
The character and planet art, by Naïade, is also interesting. If you know their work from warmer, more whimsical games, Zenith’s look might surprise you: it leans into a slightly stranger, more angular sci-fi style that fits the setting. The three peoples feel visually distinct without turning into clichés, and the whole thing avoids the generic “blue for tech, red for war” visual language that a lot of space games fall into.
Then there’s the materials. Instead of plastic, Zenith uses RE-Wood for its tokens and markers – a composite based on recycled wood and natural binders. In practice, that means a slightly different texture and weight than typical plastic pieces, with the quiet satisfaction of knowing you’re not adding more petroleum-based bits to your shelf. Eco-friendly initiatives like this are still far too rare in board games, so it’s genuinely nice to see a publisher at this scale committing to it.
The only thing working against that otherwise neat production is, again, the icon density. Lay Zenith out on the table and the initial wow factor is less “what a gorgeous board” and more “wow, that’s a lot of symbols.” Once you get past that, it’s a clean, pleasant production with a conscience.
Zenith is firmly in the “tight tactical duel” camp. Don’t expect a long arc of empire-building or narrative storytelling. What you get instead is an evolving puzzle where tempo, efficiency and reading your opponent matter more than big combos.
The three peoples don’t lock you into rigid playstyles, but they do nudge you in different directions. In my plays, Robots often ended up as the default “efficiency” choice: strong tech synergies, good at squeezing extra value out of actions. Humans felt like flexible generalists, good for reacting to the board. Animods were more swingy and interactive, with effects that could really throw off your opponent’s plans when timed right.
Because every card can be used for an agent, a tech upgrade, or a leadership effect, the draw luck never felt wildly unfair. Yes, sometimes your opponent will see a perfect color-match for the planet they’re racing for, and that can be frustrating. But more often than not, the game asks: “Okay, this is the hand you’ve got. Can you find a line that still keeps pressure on the planets or builds towards a future spike?”
The tech tracks are the main source of long-term planning. Each step up a track gives you a stronger and cumulative benefit, so the more you invest in one people, the snowballier it gets. Your early choices here massively influence how your mid and late game feel. Do you rush cheap techs to get a broad foundation, or laser-focus on one faction’s fifth-level monster ability at the expense of immediate planet pressure?
After around ten plays, mostly two-player and a couple of team games, Zenith still feels fresh. Different opening hands, different early planet movements, and different tech priorities create distinct arcs without needing big setup changes or a pile of expansions. It scratches a similar itch to games like Splendor Duel or Air, Land & Sea, but with a bit more engine-building and long-term planning layered over the tug-of-war.
If you get tired of teaching the icons, the digital version on Board Game Arena is a surprisingly good way to keep the game in rotation. The platform handles icon reminders and rules enforcement for you, which lets you focus on the tactical core. After a few BGA games, going back to the physical box felt much smoother – my brain was finally thinking in “Zenith” instead of translating every symbol on the fly.
Zenith hits a very specific audience sweet spot:
If your idea of a great night is explaining Catan or Ticket to Ride to new players, Zenith is going to feel like jumping two steps ahead. If your shelves already hold a few icon-dense Euros and you enjoy that initial struggle-then-reward feeling, Zenith is absolutely worth your time.
After living with Zenith for a couple of weeks, here’s where I’ve landed.
As a two-player tactical game, it’s excellent. The tension around the five planets, the multi-use cards, and the tech tracks all combine into a compact system that keeps you thinking right up until the final influence token is taken. The sense of escalation – from modest early turns to late-game power plays that yank planets back and forth – is genuinely satisfying.
The eco-friendly RE-Wood components and the clean board design are more than just nice bonuses; they make Zenith enjoyable to handle and look at over repeated plays, and they align with where I’d love to see more of the hobby going.
The cost of all that depth is a steep, icon-heavy learning curve. You’ll spend your first games decoding symbols instead of seeing strategy. Some players will never push past that barrier, and that’s okay. Zenith isn’t trying to be everyone’s first “modern board game” – and it really shouldn’t be taught as one.
If you’re in the target audience, though, Zenith more than earns its As d’Or “Initié” win. It’s become one of my favorite recent two-player strategy games, the kind I’m happy to pull out when both players are awake enough to do a bit of mental sparring.
Score: 8.5 / 10
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