New Citrus Heights ‘game cafe’ gives opportunity to unplug, connect

By Sara Beth Williams–
A new game cafe opened on Sunrise Boulevard last weekend, featuring more than 700 board games, card games, tabletop games, and a Star Wars display gallery.

The Citrus Heights Chamber of Commerce welcomed the new business Galaxy Game Café in a post on their Facebook page and invited the community to join in the business’s grand opening on April 13. The business is located in the shopping center on the southeastern corner of Sunrise Boulevard and Antelope Road, where Leatherby’s and Family Fitness are also located.

Owners Melisa and Robert Roden said there was a steady stream of people throughout the grand opening, with an overall “really positive reception” from the community.

The cafe describes itself as a “family-owned play space” on Yelp, with the motto of: “Unplug. Connect with others.”

“We really want people to disconnect from all of the virtual stuff and really engage with people they’re hanging out with,” Roden told The Sentinel, adding that the café has no Wi-Fi, no screens on the walls and no outlets where patrons can plug in electronic devices.

The concept for the business was motivated in part by Roden’s love of board games, and her husband’s love of Star Wars. Roden said playing board games together “has been a huge part of our family,” and her six children were able to learn reading, math, strategy concepts and positive sportsmanship through consistently playing board games.

When Roden and her husband married, she discovered he had an extensive Star Wars collection. Her dream, Roden said, had always been to find a way to bring everything out of storage and put it on display.

The Galaxy Game Café meshes both passions into one, featuring over 700 board games on shelves along the back wall and an extensive Star Wars collection displayed in glass cases around the shop.

After earning an MBA in entrepreneurship, Roden said she “turned her thesis into a business plan” and began pursuing the idea of opening a shop for gaming in 2018, but plans were stalled in 2020 during the pandemic. Roden picked the idea back up in May 2023 and began searching for a location to open up shop.

The building they found in Citrus Heights was “perfect,” Roden said, because it was in a familiar area where she spent a lot of time while growing up, and because the facility had plenty of space for the business to grow.

“We could see ourselves being here really long term,” Roden said, adding that the open game play area has a seating occupancy of 130 people, and plenty of room for the Star Wars gallery.

Roden and her husband plan to expand beyond offering only an open gaming area and are building inventory for a retail space in the front portion of the store. The retail space will be open to the public, while the open game space, will require a $10 fee to play.

The Rodens also plan to offer games to go, which are boxes with sets of games based around a theme that patrons can rent and take home for a day. Roden also wants to establish after-school gaming camps and summer camps for kids and teens which focus on STEM games and strategy building games.

Along with kids’ activities, Roden plans to initiate weekly events for adults, including Dungeons and Dragons sessions, gaming tournaments, singles meet-ups, and possibly Magic: The Gathering sessions and couples’ nights. Roden said she encourages community suggestions and has placed suggestion boxes around the shop.

Roden also plans to offer classes where patrons can learn specific aspects of gaming such as how to play Settlers of Catan, or how to create Dungeons and Dragons characters.

Unlimited game play costs $10 per individual, with a restriction on building reentry, according to Roden. In the near future, the shop will establish memberships, which begin at $30 a month per individual and include unlimited free play as well as unlimited in and out access to the facility. Roden said she is in the process of updating the shop’s website with new information, but the café regularly posts news and updates on their Facebook Page.

The Galaxy Game Café is located at 7700 Sunrise Blvd Suite 1900 and is currently open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.