Earth Review

Earth from Inside Up Games has players playing cards in order to build a tableau of 16 in order to develop their own ecosystems. At the start of the game, players will have cards to determine their starting hand size and bonus abilities and scoring objectives. There will also be animal cards that act as in game goals that will give points to the first to complete these objectives along with 2 more end game goals for everyone. When it's your turn, you'll simply place the action marker above what you want to do on your turn. This ranges from playing cards to adding sprouts or trees on your cards or gaining soil (money). While this happens, every other player will get to do lesser version of the same action. Then everyone will activate all of the cards in their tableau that match the color of the action played. Where you place cards is key here. You'll activate in order from left to right down the tableau so your most optimal engine needs to be carefully planned out. Once you go, pass to the next player and they'll choose an action. It doesn't need to be a different one. This continues until someone reaches a 4x4 grid of cards and the game will end. Players count their scores and the highest will win.

The Good: Watching your engine develop in Earth is extremely satisfying. Since there's several different options, you can potentially develop multiple engines at a time to make for a very efficient ecosystem. The game includes several different modes including a beginner version along with teams and solo. Beginner will simplify the scoring and take away some of the shared objectives. With so many moving parts, it feels very streamlined especially with so many different strategies that can be implemented at a time. Allowing players to constantly be doing things during everyones turn makes the game feel much more alive. There is not much downtime since you'll always have opportunities to run your engines.

The Okay: The scoring is mostly straightforward but with so much happening in the game when literally everything scores points, you can feel a bit overwhelmed when you're tallying it all up. You'll get points for your cards played, your cards composted (discarded), sprouts on cards, trunks on cards, canopies, objectives on your board and the main board, and more. It's not uncommon for scores to reach way into the 100s. As long as you take it systematically you should be fine but if you lose focus for a second, good luck. There is also a lot of symbols and while the reference on boards is nice, sometimes the cards require a little bit of extra interpretation.

The Not So Good: There aren't a ton of flaws with Earth, the game at least, but because there are so many cards in the box you can spend a long time trying to draw what you need. For one game, I needed mushroom cards and I could not pull one to save my life. I spent a long time fishing for one and eventually had to concede that plan to catch back up with everyone. Consequently, with that many cards in the game, I don't love the way it goes back into the box. I don't dislike bags for cards but I wish there was a better storage solution. If anyone has one, let me know.

Final Thoughts: Earth surprised me with how good it was. I'm not someone who is interested in plants or even really knows any so thematically it felt meh at first but when you start building your tableau and engine, the game shines. From turn 1, you can feel the possibilities. Maxime Tardiff is a designer I had never heard of but you better believe I am a huge fan. I cannot wait to see what's coming next from him.

A review copy was provided by the publisher for content creation purposes.