From a past class called Planetary Media, we had to play “Waking Mars”, which is an iphone/tablet game where astronauts wanted to terraform Mars. The game was extremely time consuming but all of the levels included some form of discovering new plants on Mars and growing plants on the planet. When I walked into the game room, I saw the same pictures on the mobile game on a card game called “Terraforming Mars: Prelude”. At first, I noticed that the game is just a set of around 40 cards with a straightforward one page set of instructions, so it looked like an extremely condensed version of the mobile game. However, I looked at the cards and immediately was overwhelmed with the amount of information on each one. Later, I found out that this was just an expansion pack to a board game, which made a lot more sense. Interestingly, there was also a solo player card that would also allow us to play individually which I was excited to try.
In terms of game mechanics, the actual board game comes with over 400 cards but the expansion pack comes with 47 cards- the deck is split into prelude (majority of the cards-35), project cards (7), and corporation cards (5). In the mobile game, each player was an astronaut, but in the board game, each of us play as corporations with the goal of terraforming the planet- each player can launch projects and the player with the highest terraform rating will win. Examples of projects are selling patents, launching power plants and asteroids, growing greenery, and building cities. I thought the board was very well organized, as it includes nice graphics of Mars, the temperature, and projects. There is also a physical graphic on the board that represents terraform rating which has its own game piece that will move up when players terraform the planet more. Projects also cost money to do and everyone has a different amount and can spend a different amount. A critique is how there are a lot of sub-rules such as you cannot build a city next to another city. I also liked how some project cards could only be played if certain parameters were met, such as if Mars was at 5 degrees C or -20 degrees C. Players also have to use resources to play certain cards as well. If you terraform certain parts of the planet, you can gain more resources in certain places. Overall, I think the game is highly interactive and involved because the game even gives players the opportunity to make other people lose resources. The only thing is that it takes quite a bit of time for the game to take off as most of the Youtube tutorials of the game are around 15-30 minutes. However, the theme of Mars/space, the graphics, and the gameplay is unique and interesting and does not seem like another board game. I have personally not played any other space-themed or terraforming board games to compare to this.
