“Terraforming Mars”
designed by Jacob Fryxelius, published by Intrafin Games/Stronghold Games
The Quick Summary: You are in charge of a corporation who wishes terraform Mars and dominate it in the process. By building up your corporation, you will have to implement projects, plant forests, create oceans, and increase the planet’s temperature to make it hospitable to future colonists. A strong mix of tile-laying and engine building mechanics.
The Awesome:
- Very fast. A solo game can be setup, played, and stored in 45 minutes. Time increases with more players, but set up and take down is still very fast.
- Very good theme: you get the feeling that you are actually terraforming Mars.
The Good:
- Multiplayer is very fun. A nice mix of strategy and planning with a little take-that.
- Can be played solo. The solo option makes for a very tense and tight game. It’s NOT easy.
- Not many tokens to deal with. Resources cubes are used to represent many different things, depending on where they are placed.
- Easy to understand. Rulebook is well-designed.
The Bad:
- Projects cards are so numerous they can be hard to shuffle. It’s a THICK deck.
The Ugly:
- Component quality is below average. Cards are thin, many resource cubes are chipped, and the player mat only needs a slight bump to mess up your current production levels.
Keep it or leave it? Totally keep it. The engine building aspect of the game is very entertaining and the theme fits very well with the mechanics. I can play this with my wife, a casual gamer, and with more hardcore gamers.