The eventful life of Marie Curie
Before going on a short Christmas break, let’s take a look at a beautiful game that is also perfect for family gaming sessions! 🥰
Become assistants to Marie Curie and help her with experiments 🧪 and research papers 📚 regarding radioactivity, and follow along her life’s journey as she receives not just one but two Nobel prizes 🥇 for her findings! We are talking about ⚗️In the Footsteps of Marie Curie, the second installment of this scientific series from @sorrywearefrench .
This is an entry-level game with very low rules overhead. The main element of the game is a cube tower. 🧊 Resource cubes will be thrown into the tower at the start of each turn (as dictated by the round tracker), but due to the nature of cube towers only some will fall out, while others will be stuck inside. 🧐 Later, cubes already in the tower might be dislodged by new cubes, so the available resources should keep surprising you.
On your turn you either take some resource cubes from the available ones or take a thesis tile for some bonuses. Then you can exchange or use resources to complete experiments, convert them to points or buy cards from the display. Cards have a simple set-collection mechanism: the more you get from the same type, the better the rewards are. ☝️ Your storage is limited so you should use up resource cubes to avoid wasting them.
Sometimes a clock ⌚ symbol appears on some game elements. In these cases you have to move the tracker on the time track that symbolizes the life of Marie Curie. During these steps events will be triggered that affect all players. The last step of the track signals the end of the game.
As you complete experiments you will be able to take and keep more resources each turn. 😉 You also have a starting goal ✉️ that you can complete for additional points. Ultimately it's all a super quick efficiency puzzle, spiced up by the randomness of the cube tower’s output. The box says a playtime of 20-30 minutes, and that is actually realistic. While the decision space of the game isn’t very large, it is fun converting your resources around and collecting cards in pursuit of more victory points. A fun little gateway experience! 🙂
