(Re)Building From the Ground Up - A Review of Life in Reterra

 When Life in Reterra popped up on the BGG news list, I thought it sounded like an interesting idea and seemed similar enough to several games that were highly regarded here on BGG (read: Kingdomino) that I thought that I'd be interested in playing it. I had previously played Queendomino and found that it was a clever and fun way to play dominoes that was just more than simple matching pips to one another. There was depth and strategy to Queendomino that I appreciated, but not enough that it was "spend 10 minutes thinking about my next move" deep.

So when Life in Reterra was announced on BGG, I thought it sounded really interesting. The game took the tile laying, tableau-building of dominoes and added an extra layer of placing buildings and added in a dash of post-apocalyptic rebuilding as the theme. It was noted that the game wasn't going to be terribly heavy, but as someone who was looking for some lighter games to add to my collection, this seemed like a perfect addition to my collection since I didn't have a domino-esque builder in my collection yet.

Add on that the game itself was designed by Eric M. Lang, who's major game design credits are things like Blood Rage, Ankh: Gods of Egypt, Cthulhu: Death May Die, and Marvel United, I knew that the game would be something special to it. While I hadn't had a chance to play much of what he had to offer, from what I could tell from his game publishing list, I knew that quite a few were highly rated here on BGG and there was some good DNA behind the game.

It was a bit frustrating that the game itself was a Target exclusive and surprisingly enough, published by Hasbro of all publishers, but after reading several more reviews on the game, I thought it sounded like a really cool idea to add to my collection. I purchased a copy myself and after playing it, I can definitely state that I am happy that I have the game in my collection. There's a significant lack of information about the game, so I thought I would write a quick review of Life in Reterra to help provide some basic information about the components, gameplay, and overall feel of the game.

Life in Reterra - (Re)Building From the Ground Up

The artwork is just as fanciful and clever as the cover.

Publish Year: 2024
Publisher: Hasbro
Mechanics: Open Drafting, Tile Placement
Player Count: 2-4 players
Play Time: 20-30 minutes
Overall Score (Rank): 6.9 (#9712 at the time of writing)

What's in the Box? At first glance, it doesn't look like there's too much in the box when you open up the game as the box contains three separate punch boards, a small tri-fold board, four plastic trays, and a fifth plastic tray that houses some 104 tiles for the land that you build your tableau with.

However, it's after the boards are punched out that the game really shows it's cleverness with it's storage design. All of the punched out building tiles are stored in one of three "sets" that then get stored with the appropriate cards for those buildings. Players can mix or match what is in the various sets, with options to build (and record) their own sets, as well as some additional pre-made sets that are included in the rulebook for players to utilize. There is also a fourth tray that houses the score pad, small wooden builder figurines, and the junk/artefact tokens.

This game is all about reusing and rebuilding and it does so in an extremely clever way as well as all sets are interchangeable and the tokens are double-sided to allow for players to offer double function. While the cardboard for the buildings and tokens is on the thinner side, it actually feels quite nice and the colors on each of the fantastically illustrated building tiles really pop. Each of the different sets also has a cover to prevent pieces from scattering in the box, making this easy to store sideways on your shelf.

How does it play? Life in Reterra is extremely similar to it's domino-laying counterpart, Kingdomino, albeit with several interesting alterations to the gameplay. While players do take turns picking and placing one of the five available land tiles, or one of their own "secret" tiles, turn proceeds around the table in a clockwise manner, with no one person getting an advantage over the other. While initially this seems frustrating, I never found myself without an option of a tile to add onto my tableau that I was building due to the large amount of variability of the four quadrant land tiles. There might be some that were more advantageous to me, but the beauty of this game is that it revolves around the buildings, rather than the land (for the most part).

If a player has placed a land tile that has a gear icon on it, players can also choose to place a building if they have a set of gears that are in the right configuration, or choose to place a worker on a single gear icon that has just been built. Buildings come in three shapes: an "I" shape, an "L" shape and a square, requiring players to have the required shape before they are built. These buildings offer ongoing effects or extra points at the end of the game based on the building ability and that changes from building card to building card in the set. There are 6 of each card of the "I" and "L" buildings and 3 square buildings, but each card is double sided, effectively making there be 12 and 6 of each building respectively.

Players can pick and choose buildings to include in their game and there are some that even let you mess with your opponents by adding "junk" tokens on top of their artefacts, effectively losing that player 2 points (1 for the artefact and 1 for the junk token). While some buildings let you add junk tokens to your neighbor's tableau, others allow you to add an artefact to your own, adding an additional point per artefact. While this might feel a bit too much "take that", the additional junk tokens are actually fairly rare depending on building and are well-balanced to not overwhelm your tableau with negative points.

Tiles also have artefacts on them which are worth extra points and players can choose a tile with two artefacts versus a tile with only one or zero, but have a tradeoff that those tiles won't have any gears, and therefore allow them to build another building on their tableau. It's a nice little balancing act that I look forward to playing around with the various card combinations to see how well each one works together with one another.

There's one final tile piece that is worth an extra 8 points, and that is the "Power Source" tile and it only scores if all 4 sides are surrounded by other land tiles. If players don't have all 4 sides surrounded, it counts for 0 points at the end of the game. Players can also work towards making contiguous sets of same land groupings on tiles as a set of 7 or more earns players 3 points. There are even some buildings that gain bonus points based on the largest grouping of same land on your tableau. Players play until they build a 4x4 grid of tiles, each player getting the same amount of turns as everyone else.

At the end of the game, players count up points, including totaling totals from visible artefacts, workers placed, groupings of land with 7+ sections, and buildings (including building bonues) while subtracting junk tokens visible on their tableau that were placed by other players. The player with the highest point total wins the game.

With three separate containers to store various sets in, players can pick and choose buildings to keep in the box for easy setup and with the included space in the rulebook, even add some additional sets of their own making.

Overall Thoughts:

I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing Life in Reterra. It isn't the deepest game that will wow everyone the next time you bring it to a party, but it is one that (I think) has some staying power with how much there is to play with in the box. It's not an impressively deep strategy game, but as someone who is constantly thinking about how to get my daughters to learn to play games, this is a fantastic gateway game to really draw them in.

The colors and simplicity of the game draw in players and the surprising amount of depth and variation in the game will keep them coming back. Even as I write this, I cannot help but wonder what other combinations of buildings that I could build and play with on my next game. Each game lasts about 20 or so minutes and I can't see it lasting longer than 30-40 minutes, even with someone who might take a bit longer to make their decisions.

Additionally, I really do appreciate the clever scaling that the game adds with an addition of a third and fourth player. The main board has outlines for the number of buildings of each type that get added per player with the lowest amount being added for two, and the most for four players. With how the game plays, it is an excellent way to scale since while there might be more players, the overall pick and lay tile mechanics don't change at all.

I also want to note that I have only played one game of Life in Reterra and my thoughts about it might change further down the line. While there is a significant amount of potential variability, I'm not terribly certain how well each of the included buildings work together and how viable different combinations might be in the game.

I do wish that the game had a solo mode to go with it since I don't think that it would take too much effort to add something to the game. While there is an unofficial solo mode, it still begs the question why something wasn't included, especially since it wouldn't take too much time and energy to build something into the basic rules of the game. However, with the game being published by Hasbro, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised about this as it would be an extra cost. Additionally, it is rather odd that with many games offering a fifth player option, Life in Reterra doesn't offer more than four, but that could come down to cost and balancing again.

I also am slightly concerned with the thinner cardboard that is used for the building pieces and while I believe that it was done to ensure that the pieces fit nicely into the storage units, it does lead me to wish that they were slightly bigger in thickness since they feel a bit too flimsy for a game that seems to be aimed at kids aged 10 and up.

The Good:
 - Beautiful production
 - Fantastic storage
 - Quick setup
 - Easy to learn gameplay
 - Large amount of variability
 - Excellent 2-4 player scaling
 - Great Gateway game

The Bad:
 - On the lighter end
 - While strategic, variability is debatable
 - Limited to 4 players
 - Thinner production on building and token cardboard pieces

The Ugly
 - No solo play

Overall, I am extremely impressed with what Lang and Ken Gruhl have accomplished with Life in Reterra. While not the most mechanically deep game, this is an excellent lighter game and is a really great way to introduce some strategic games to younger gamers or those who don't normally play board games. The variability in setup and ability to tailor the game and buildings to your preferences lends itself well to players who would like to increase player interaction or reduce the game to playing a "solo-multiplayer." The lack of solo play is a bit disappointing, but there are workarounds for that issue for those really wanting to play it solo.

Overall, I would give the game an 8/10 as it's definitely a great lighter game and would be one that I probably would suggest if we were looking for a lighter, more strategic game to play.

Give me your thoughts: Do you have any developers that you like to follow or play games from (i.e. Reiner Knizia, Eric M. Lang, or Elizabeth Hargrave)? Do you get any ideas for games to play from the BGG News posts and are there some games that you'd try, even if it wasn't that well known if it was featured? What games have you bought that have been announced on BGG, or purchased at the recommendation of someone else here on BGG?

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*Originally published on BoardGameGeek on 28/6/2024*