Your young little planet is approaching its’ first billion years. That means it’s time for you to take on the very important challenge of creating life! Will you be able to create the best habitats on your planet to help that new life thrive? It’s time to try!

What Is It?

Open Drafting – Each turn players draft a terrain token from those available. 5 come out at a time, and do not refill until they have all been taken

Pattern Building – Players will place terrain tokens on their planet boards to make certain patterns to complete biome cards (fulfill contracts). When certain terrain types are next to each others, players can also perform a single planetary event during each turn to change some terrains into others

Who Is It For?

  • 1 to 4 Players – Solo is a nice little puzzle if that’s your style of solo game. I thought 3 players was the sweet spot. At 2 I felt like the biome cards didn’t rotate enough, and at 4 it was likely some terrains would run out
  • Ages 8 & Up / Light Game Fans – Small rule set, very approachable; good welcoming game for a wide audience; also has 2 modes of play available
  • Fans of drafting and pattern building
  • Fans of light strategy and quick plays

Variants

Family – All boards are the same. There are 2 less spaces, no points for terrain of the type that matches your board, and no planetary events – The family mode definitely wasn’t for me, as I found it too light. But, I thought it would be good for younger players or those newer to gaming who want to ease into the standard rules.

Solo – Play against the Black Hole which starts with 20 (Family) or 40 (Standard) points. Each round, the player takes out 3 tokens from the bag, keeps 1 and gives 2 to the Black Hole. The Black Hole can complete 1 biome card per turn, and ignores joker symbols and position of terrain, but must spend the tokens used to complete biome cards, so may only use them once. – Really nice little puzzle. It can be tricky to balance what you keep with what you give the Black Hole, especially because they get more tokens than you each round, but it’s fun to weigh your options to try and avoid giving them too many biome cards. It’s interesting, and has a really nice flow.

PROS

  • Aesthetics – Cute boards, love how they look once they’re filled with terrain tokens
  • Rules – Well-written and clear; quick teach
  • Good variety in biome cards
  • Easy set-up
  • Smooth turns / gameflow
  • Love sliding the tokens around the board to try and complete the cards
  • Good balance of player interaction (with drafting) and the individual strategy (with the personal board)
  • Plays quickly

CONS

  • Randomness of biome cards and terrain tokens. Sometimes some players get much luckier than others with what comes out, especially in the deck, and it can lead to some swingy-ness
  • I thought the forest board was kind of odd (bonus x2 for forest instead of x1 for forest and x1 for something else). All other boards seem to give more flexibility in scoring, so it felt more limiting using this one.

Final Thoughts

I thought the game was a neat little puzzle. Drafting meant you had to pay some attention to what others were doing, which worked well to keep players invested on others’ turns. And the sliding on the board let you pivot to adapt to what tokens and cards were available, which was neat.

I could see some gamers finding it too light or too quick, but I liked the flow and I thought it was great for when you want something with some light strategy, but not super brain-burning. It’s very approachable, and offers decent choice alongside some of the luck factor.

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 7/10

Designer – Gricha German
Artist – Baptiste Perez
Publisher – North Star Games
MSRP – $29.99
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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