Race for the Galaxy takes place in the future where space travel and alien life form is an every day occurrence. Unknown colonies, strange worlds, and space developments lay ahead the player’s journey to create the ultimate civilization. This games goal is to assemble extensive civilizations by the cards they are dealt which represent either unknown worlds or new developments. Rounds consist of one to five possible phases. The selected phases by each player will occur and each player performs the action described by the card. In the mean time the players who chose that action receives a bonus for that phase. Your goal: to build the most prosperous and powerful space empire!

Each round will begin by the drawing of one of these five cards: Explore, Develop, Settle, Consume, or Produce; and then they are revealed.
Each player then begins to create a civilization that must start in their home world.
Throughout the game, players must try to earn points by settling into new worlds, developing new attributes for their colony, and by consuming goods produced in ones own colony.
The cards in your hand represent the worlds and civilization’s developments and can be used as payment to receive new developments from your opponent’s civilizations. Another thing to remember is that the face-down cards are used as tokens that represent the goods that world produces.
Each turn the player has the option to develop more for their colony; at that time they would discard one less card as their bonus. Upon picking up an Explore card, you then are allowed to draw cards and select which of them to add to your hand. Settle cards permit you to place a world in your hand. Each world performs different tasks. Some worlds can produce goods, only once the produce card has been drawn. Each player has the option to discard their goods for victory points or they can sell them to increase the number of cards in the player's hand.
The players who can best manage their cards in a strategic manner and create the greatest space empire wins, ultimately you need the highest total of victory points from tokens and from cards in their hand.