Revive 2.0 or something more?

Recall is one of the big new releases from SPIEL25. I think the first thought of everyone seeing this game is how much it resembles Revive. And there really are many resemblances: The designers are almost the same, and the theme and artwork are eerily familiar as well. In both games you lead tribes in a kind of post-apocalyptic world, exploring the map, spreading out, constructing buildings and trying to leave your mark on the world. There are even smaller things like artifacts/machines you can activate as free actions, or the little crates you can get for random rewards. Gameplay is similar, heavy on combos and satisfying action chaining.

It is a bit different in some ways however, so I want to break this down with a bit of a comparison. I’ll dedicate a chapter for the differences to Revive, but let’s check the general gameplay first!

Game Structure

The game is simply split up into 13 rounds, where a round is just one turn for every player.
In addition there are 3 special rounds where you just have to decide how you specialize between two end game scoring opportunities, and 1 more round where you only discard one of your two objective cards. When choosing you also take into account the bonuses that come with your choices.

Action selection

Each round you either use a keycard or recall.
Keycards are slotted into 1 of 6 action slots on your player board, activating both the action and the keycard’s bonuses.
Recalling lets you reclaim every keycard and free up the action slots - plus you get to activate an income effect for each keycard you take back.

The actions mostly all do the same: Giving you movement points and Develop actions in different amounts, but they all feel useful depending on the situation.
Movement is important, because to construct buildings or interact with things on the map, you actually have to be there with your tribesmen meeples. Another important detail is that building where other players have already built costs more meeples, and those aren’t easy to come by.

Develop actions let you build or excavate. Different terrain types can hold different buildings, which have various costs and rewards - Vaults are cheap and give you a one time bonus, Settlements give you additional keycards, and Monuments are expensive but provide some bonuses and end game points. There are also Camps on the board that reward you if you build next to them (similar to Lakes in Revive). As you remove buildings from your player board, you uncover new income effects you can activate when recalling.

One more action is Revealing new map tiles. To make it worth your while, when flipping a tile you get to choose the orientation and you get some points for players present nearby.

You start out with 2 keycards, so focusing on getting more is quintessential, otherwise you have to do recall turns often. You can also upgrade older keycards, so they provide better bonuses. As you reach certain thresholds on the victory point track, you get to upgrade your actions. Each action has 2 possible upgrades. As the game goes on and you get new keys and better actions, your turns become more effective, which gives the game a satisfying arc.

A bit more gameplay

Recall has one of the true euro staples: 3 tracks. This might seem uninspired on first glance, but I really like the interpretation here, as tracks symbolize the knowledge of three previous tribes who no longer exist. Certain hexes of the map contain Relicubes you can pick up with meeples, and excavation sites let you excavate Ability Stones which are used to activate free actions. When you collect these Relicubes or Stones, you go up on the corresponding track, learning the abilities of these past tribes.

Every player starts out with a Gadget tile (an activatable free action) and an asymmetric faction ability, but as you go up the tracks you collect more Gadgets and get access to the abilities of all 3 extinct tribes. This is great both mechanically and thematically. I also cannot resist mentioning one of the tribes I’ve played as, who can build pig farms to breed pigs that can be spent instead of meeples. 

 It’s also crazy that there are pig meeples and pig farm tiles just for this one tribe - and there are a few other tribes with special tokens.

Keycard turns can already feel gratifying when you manage to get some things done, but free actions do a great job of making turns even more meaningful. You can open crates or exchange resources, but most importantly you can use your Ability Stones to activate Gadgets or tribe abilities. You get those Stones back when you do a recall turn. You start out with just one such Stone, but as you play you get access to a lot more, which again helps this feeling of getting more versatile.

The main differences to Revive

Okay let’s jump into the most interesting chapter.

Of course there are multiple things such as game structure or way of scoring points where the two designs diverge, but I feel like there are 3 main elements where the differences feel the most impactful. Let’s break them down:

1. Resource management:
Revive has 3 different resource tracks, plus a wild resource type.
Recall only has crystals, but these can be upgraded and downgraded into 3 various levels. I like this a lot, it reminds me of Saltfjord’s system. Different actions require different types of crystals, and it always feels like you can never have enough - or that you always have the wrong type. Using abilities to convert crystals is part of the fun.

Meeples are also required for every single action, so they definitely count as a resource. Both crystals and meeples are something you constantly generate but then quickly use up, which has an enjoyable ebb-and-flow.

2. Action selection:
Revive has 3 core actions you can choose to do, or you play cards into your slots, activating both slot bonuses and card effects accordingly. Basically you keep stocking up on resources with cards to be able to do the actions.

In Recall every action revolves around movement and develop actions, you mainly choose what amounts of these best suit your needs in the current turn (Ok, the first “A” action only generates meeples, and the “F” action copies another used action, but I am trying to simplify things). Actions are allocated to slots though, so you block future use of slots when using them until you recall. You also get to upgrade the base actions.

In Revive you do a refresh turn when you run out of cards and resources, so you are unable to execute actions.
In Recall you do a refresh turn when you run out of keycards or slots to use them with.

3. Movement on the map:
I think this is the biggest one that changes the feel of the game.
In Revive you don’t really move around, you just calculate the range, pay resources accordingly, and place out meeples or buildings to claim bonuses - and get closer to distant regions.
In Recall this is all much more intuitive. Whatever you want to do, you have to go to specific hexes with your meeples. It also makes the layout of the modular map more significant. There are unpassable volcanoes or water hexes you can only move through with a special move action. For me this is so much more fun than the range system.

Closing Thoughts

The main criticism I heard so far is the downtime and I guess I can attest to that.
To be honest we only played 2p so far (our primary player count), and even like this we go over 2 hours (maybe 140 minutes or so?). But it probably gets longer with 3p or 4p.

On the flipside the reason for the downtime is also what makes the game so enjoyable: action chaining, free actions and satisfying combos. The game is genuinely fun and rewarding to play.

Art is subjective so it’s always difficult to discuss. That said, I do feel like the art of Recall is slightly improved over Revive, though it still has many of those less attractive grey-brown colors over all the board and components.

Whether you might want Recall over Revive is up to personal preferences I guess. If you are a collector and like to own many games you can easily buy/keep both (just like you might do with GWT, Pandemic games or such), but if you are on a budget you could look for a second-hand copy of Revive and have a similar experience. In the end it's up to you. I'll only say that the game is definitely worth at least a try for any euro enthusiast.

Thanks for reading!
Kristof & Reni