A nearby solar system has been destroyed by a supernova. Now is your time to move in and take the valuable resources from its unstable planets — but these jobs are too dangerous to do alone, so send in teams of Hired Paws and form uneasy truces with your rivals to come away with the best loot.

Afternova is a game of strategic negotiation for 3-6 players. Score victory points by getting fragments shown on your blueprints to build ship upgrades. When a player finishes 6 of blueprints, the game ends and the player with the most victory points wins.

On your turn, you can either take 3 cards from the market or extract fragments from a planet. When performing a Market action, you may take any combination of Blueprint and Hired Paw cards. Blueprints are required to score points, but they also grant special abilities. Hired Paws have different skill sets, so you will need a variety of Hired Paws to Extract, or help other players Extract. Negotiating during an Extract action is the core of the game. When performing an Extract action, you often don't have all the Hired Paws necessary to meet the planet's requirement, so you'll likely need to team up with other players to split the work and the rewards.