Solarpunk’s Present Future: A Hubworld Aidalon Review

May 5, 2025

Earthborne Games has a new game wrapping up a very successful Gamefound campaign. That is great because it is always good to see up and coming studios succeed, but it is even better when the game is this effortlessly enjoyable while remaining tense. Hubworld is a spiritual successor of Android Netrunner and the designers are up front about it; taking what they liked from that system and doubling down on what works. With these strong fundamentals they soaked it in a theme that is a delight to visit and points to who they are as a company.

Each turn both players get three actions that they take turns using one at a time. These actions can be used for just about anything. You can take a shard which is the only non action, non card resource in the game. Speaking of cards, if you want more of those you can spend an action to draw one. Cards are staged, which costs an action, into a three by three grid and you can slide your cards around by shifting them. This can be accomplished with card effects but it is not gated by having the right cards. You can always spend an action to shift one of your cards to get it exactly where you want it. This multifaceted action economy provides the baseline conversion ratios and makes it so you can always make forward progress.

Actions are the slow beat keeping time for the melodies you can play in the instant windows that come between any given action and along the way during a delve. Many things can be done at instant speed. Paying for cards, called Forging them, which turns a previously staged card face up can be done at instant speed. This matters because you can build your board in secret and then when the moment is right forge exactly what you need when you need it. Either defenses to stop your opponents delve in its tracks or sources to boost your economy when the coast is clear. The instant speed economy works through a single streamlined system. Many cards have a collect icon on them, either a card or a shard, which you can exhaust at instant speed to collect that resource. This works great because you can keep your cards ready to go all turn but after everyone has used all of their actions you can still collect from any unexhausted cards you still have before the refresh phase.

Delving is how you go about finding your opponents agents, securing them, and winning the game. If only it were that easy. As you traverse down a column of your opponents grid you may pass over face down cards, unforged in game parlance. You can discover, look at, these cards but that is risky because that might trigger nasty discover abilities you were not ready for. Passing over cards without discovering them is risky too, as your opponent might be hiding their agent right under your nose. Forged cards are more certain but can be just as scary. Your opponents obstacles must be confronted, taxing you shards if you want to continue. Assuming you clear all three grid slots on your way to a district you get the reward you were looking for. You can pay shards equal to one more than your opponent’s current heat to give them an additional heat, then you get to discover cards from the district equal to their current heat. The districts being deck(commons), hand(council), and discard(archive).

Heat is a great mechanic for many reasons and really has a modern design sensibility. Obviously discovering multiple cards is desirable and necessary to propel the game to a conclusion. So instead of having multiple bespoke ways of gaining the ability to access multiple cards you filter it all through a heat system that is transparent to the players and opens up a lot of design space for influencing heat in a myriad of ways. Design space aside, heat is great because it is a catch up mechanic without being obnoxious about it. It might not seem like it but the scaling cost for each incremental heat means it becomes harder and harder to afford to widen a heat gap with your opponent.

Hopefully I conveyed a little bit of why I am so excited for Hubworld. I will just leave you with some of my hopes for this first set. Ideally this first set will build strong mechanical identities for the four colors through simple iconic design. Early indications seem to bear this one out, especially their moment designs. Also given the long lead time for the set, which is sad but understandable, they spoil the plurality of the set sooner rather than later to allow for deck building and theorycrafting while we wait for the release. Even assuming the inevitable that some cards end up changing in play testing, I think the community will be much better served if we have enough cards to chew on while we wait. If they were to spoil all 3 pip or lower cards and all agents players could get used to the trade off that come with deck building and there would still be some marquee cards to spoil right before release to build hype. In any case I expect to be playing a lot of Hubworld, demo decks or otherwise, while I eagerly await the coming of Hubworlds first set Prime Collective.