Review: Terraforming Mars

Jacob Fryxelius is a Swedish science teacher with a doctoral degree in chemistry. With a name and background like, it’s probably not surprising that he (together with his three brothers) ended up designing sci-fi themed board games like Space Station and Fleets – The Pleiad Conflict. His latest, Terraforming Mars, takes place in the 2400s, when corporations and the world government team up for the (mostly) peaceful transformation of Earth’s planetary neighbor into a new home for humanity.

In this board game for 1-5 players, your objective is to change global conditions (oxygen, temperature, the presence of oceans) in order to increase the habitability of the red planet. Once the target conditions have been reached, all players count up “Victory Points” they gain through their contribution to the terraforming process and by completing various construction and research projects, including the development of cities and forests on Mars.

There are three main aspects to the gameplay:

• project construction. Players draw cards randomly, so there’s a bit of luck at play here. Each card can confer resource bonuses, penalize other players, affect your victory points, terraform the planet, and so on. The cards are illustrated and provide bits of backstory to projects like “Water transport from Europa”. You can also always complete standard projects such as the development of cities on Mars, represented by tiles on the board.

• resource management. You complete projects from your cards by spending resources like money, steel, titanium, energy, and you can terraform the planet by expending heat or turning cultivated plants into forests. This part of the game relies heavily on “resource cubes” each player moves around on a player board. There are also special resources like microbes and animals which are collected on project cards.

• awards and milestones. Think of these as “achievements” that add a little extra dimension to the gameplay as they are worth 5 victory points. So racing to be the first player to have 3 cities on Mars to get the “mayor” milestone, or collecting heat cubes so you get the “thermalist” award adds an interesting strategic dimension.

The game is divided into “generations”, and each generation lasts until no player wants to take any actions during their turn. Some cards add free actions to your repertoire, such as growing microbes, which means players are likely to use them during each generation. Other cards have interesting effects that kick in when something happens in the game – for example, the “pets” card earns an animal anytime a city is placed on the board. It’s important to remember to keep track of those effects.

The counting up of victory points at the end is almost a mini-game – you move your player markers along a scoring race-track as you count up the different sources of points, which is a lot more exciting than using pen and paper! And because of the many different ways to score points, you may be in for a surprise when you actually add it all up.

I’ve played the game only with two players so far. Each game has taken about 2-3 hours to complete, with a bit more the first time around to learn all the rules. The complexity is moderate to high, but if you’re into the game’s theme, it’s fun to learn the mechanics. There are a lot of different strategies you can employ, and they’re influenced a little bit by luck and by the specific corporation you choose to play.

All that translates to a really fun game experience and a lot of replay value. If you enjoy games like Settlers of Catan or video games like Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, I highly recommend checking it out. Note that the price tag at Thinkgeek is about $70 right now, which is quite a bit less than Amazon.com. It’s not a cheap game but it’s worth it.

Update, 10/30/2016: In our first couple of games, we misunderstood the generation mechanic of the game. One of the game’s designers, Jonathan Fryxelius, reached out to me on Twitter to explain it – and the game is a lot more fun if you follow the rules correctly! I’ve updated the review and rating (from four to five stars). Also, huge kudos for engaging with players of the game directly.