The space empires are in a (possibly cold) war to the death. The galaxy must fall to the supreme destiny of their species.
And to do so, it is an absolute imperative that they develop technoscrumbling-fandoozles immediately! Before the opposition do!
...and you're just the research team to help them do it, too.
Layout
There are three planets (call them RGB). Each has a small (1-3) number of tech cards next to them, and a supply of approriately coloured cubes. Each player has a marker, and it will be on one of the planets. They also have some cards; a discard pile of used cards; and there's a deck of event cards.
Gameplay
Each turn, each player simultaneously plays a card from their hand. You have 8 to choose from, at first.
Play oue of your six (3x2) 'go to planet x' cards. Move your marker to the given planet. Take a cube from it.
Sabbatical. Remove your marker to your hand, and draw an event card.
Technologise! Leave your marker where it is. Take a cube from where it is.
Then resolve plaigarism:
Pass a 'goto' card from hand to each player who is on the planet counter-clockwise from you, if you are on a planet, if any.
If you cannot, reveal any remaining cards to show they're not legal, and they get to draw an event card instead.
And finally, technologification time for each player who played the 'technologise' card:
If you are alone on whatever planet you are on (and no, you cannot be on extended sabbatical) you may pay the cubes to build one of the technologies on the planet. Most techs will have 1 or 2 other tech cards that can be owned in-lieue of a cube or two. These tech cards are the primary points source.
Oh, and it may have some VP chips on it, if so, great, you get them.
Ending
Once all techs are built, game over. I'm thinking starting with 3 techs on each planet should be about the right length, but we can tweak that.
Event cards are held until you use them; and can be played any time - they are all "Take up to one card from each other player's discard pile" plus another thing, that gives benefit if you can use it at the appropriate time,. e.g. "You don't have to give away cards for plaigirism" or "Pretend you are alone on this planet, this turn (so you can build a tech)" or "Gai two cubes instead of one".
The main point of this game, of course, is still the very very silly tech, event, and flavour text.
So yeah, total rules rip and replace. Now based off the towers mechanic that I am ripping out of 3-little-pigs.