Cultivating a synergistic ecosystem
We only back games that we are hyped for, so naturally we are anxiously awaiting all of them - recently as I heard the fulfillment of 🌏Earth🌏 by @insideupgames is getting closer, it jumped high on my anticipation list. We finally have it in our hands now! 😁
Earth is a tableau/engine-builder game, in which everyone is trying to build their synergistic ecosystem made of a grid of 4x4 cards, that hopefully scores the most points.
The gameflow is quite streamlined: the active player chooses 1 of 4 actions, and everyone gets to do a weaker version of that action at the same time. 🧐 The actions themselves aren’t that interesting, but they also trigger matching colored abilities of cards in your tableau - which means as your tableau grows, so will the length of your combos.
Your tableau will be made of Flora and Terrain cards. Terrain cards are really cool, as they give all sorts of scoring conditions or ongoing abilities. Most have some kind of spatial aspect, which really elevates the card-laying puzzle part of the game! There are also Event cards that you can play for one-time effects.
Everyone starts out with an Island, a Climate and an Ecosystem card, plus there are additional Fauna and Ecosystem cards on a central board. This way players have different starting conditions and abilities, plus every game will have different achievements to race for.
Cards also depict icons like plant type or climate. These can interact with other cards and give a Terraforming Mars-esque combo feel to the game. It’s really fun trying to puzzle your 4x4 grid together when you have a bunch of conditions you have to match.
💭I think Earth is a real gem of a game. It’s streamlined, easy to learn but with lots of potential for optimization. It also has a lovely nature theme and great components! I love the variability too. However, turns do start getting long at the end, and cards have a lot of information to digest at first, so there is place for analysis paralysis and downtime, and it can be hard to follow what the others are doing.
Still, I love it so far and I want to play this a bunch more times now! 🥰
