Pegasus Spiele will release First Rat, a new strategy board game, into U.S. retail in December.

In this game, the rats are building a rocket to launch themselves to the Cheese Moon, and players must help their rat family earn a place of honor in junkyard history for their contributions to the first lunar-cheese landing. On their turn, players can move a single rat five spaces or multiple rats up to three spaces. They can only move onto occupied spaces by paying in cheese. The players move rats through the junkyard while collecting resources, buying (or stealing) useful items, and eventually building rocket parts all in an effort to gain victory points. The player with the most victory points wins the game.

The game box comes with a gameboard, 22 wooden rats, 22 cards, 74 wooden pieces, 255 tiles, a scorepad, 5 player aids, a reference sheet, and a rulebook.  First Rat is for one to five players, ages 10 and up, and plays in 30 to 75 minutes. It will retail for $39.99.

Pegasus Spiele also announced the stand-alone MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House and Klaus-Jurgen Wrede's Stone Age exploration game Fire & Stone (see "Pegasus Returns to 'MicroMacro: Crime City', Heads for Stone Ages").