“Terraforming Mars” – and why I think a board game like this is worth your time

Hello good people!

Recently I acquired a new board game dubbed Terraforming Mars. The game is developed by Jacob Fryxelius and published by Stronghold Games. It has a price tag of around 60 EUR / 45 USD on Amazon. The game has an impressive rating of 8.4 on BoardGameGeek.com.
The game can be played by 2 to 5 people. The box says a game should take 90 to 120 minutes, but in my experience it’s more like 2 to 3 hours (I’ve played 20+ games so far).

The objective and how the game is played
You and your fellow gamers will be assuming the role of big corporations working to … *queue suspense sound effects* … Terraform Mars *fanfare*. Not that surprising really, is it πŸ˜‰
You start out by having a set production for your corporation, some starting capital and a corporate feat, which may help you throughout the game to a greater or lesser extent.
The games is played in rounds (simulating generations in timespan), where you go through phases of producing resources, buying project options, spending money to built said project or from a set of standard projects. Players take turns performing one or two actions per turn. When everyone is done, the round ends and a new one begins. Each project can have a variety of effects, of which some raises one or more of the three global parameters (oxygen, water and tempetature). When all these parameters reach a set level each, the game ends.
During the course of the game you raise your Terraforming Rating, which ultimately serves as Victory Points. The player with the highest amount of victory points is the winner.
The game is composed of both cards and a board on which you play tiles, thus giving an additional way to interact with other players.
You can find the rules here; Terraforming Mars rules

Why I love it and what I think makes it great
Terraforming Mars has me hooked on a number of things, which is why I’ve played more than 20 games in the course of 4 weeks. First off it has a set of really interesting mechanics. I’ve found myself pondering over which projects and actions are the best, what the return on investment is on each, how I should sequence them and lastly what my opponents are doing. I’ve played 2-player games by far the most. Even here the actions taken by my opponent in these games are an important enough factor, that I could never successfully disregard this.

Another interesting thing is that the resources you produce over time enable you to complete more projects, making you produce even more resources over time. Thus building up resource production is the most important thing in the beginning of the game. But when the game end all these resources are worth nothing in terms of winning the game – only Victory Points is – which brings in a whole new aspects of when should you shift your focus from producing resources, to gaining Victory Points.

The setting of the game is great too. It’s really well executed with regards to mechanics and gives a great ambiance to the game as a whole. I’ve caught myself chuckling a few times, when I read the flavor text on a project card and seen how well the story on it supports what it actually does in terms of gameplay.

Complexity wise the game has a lot to offer. More than once I’ve found myself missing things, so if I had to say something negative it’s got to be that the game is best played when you’re not too tired, as it will affect your enjoyment, as misplays will happen more frequently.

Terraforming Mars does have an element of luck, but I’ve never felt that you couldn’t make skill count too. It balances a fine line between skill and chance, and it does it well.

Ending remarks
I see myself playing this game over and over, and are trying to find pockets of time during my week constantly.
Terraforming Mars has all the good elements that you could stuff in a box and I am happy to toss countless hours into managing my interstellar corporation for generations to come.

Kudos FryxGames.se on a job well done πŸ˜€

10,000 version 1.6 is up on Google Play

Hi,

The 10,000 app has recieved an update.
I’ve made some improvements to the User Interface, so that buttons will be easier to tell apart from the rest of the UI. There has also been made some modifications to the computer player, so that it will try and score more than you, if you’ve reached 10,000.

I hope you all enjoy it. Go check it out πŸ™‚

Best Regards
Lars Sonne

The Android likes dice – 10,000 version 1.5 released

Hi all,

I’ve released a new version of the 10,000 – The Dice Game app on Google Play. This release features a few things.

  • You can now play against the computer
  • German translation
  • Better randomness of the dice rolls

The option to play against the computer is something that has been on my mind for quite some time and I’m happy to say that the result is now here. The AI proved to be a bit more challenging to implement than I first thought, but from my time in the computer industry I was hardly surprised. Things are in my opinion never straight forward πŸ˜‰ Nevertheless I’m quite pleased with the result.
I’ve aimed for the computer to be beatable but not a walkover, relying on a set of simple rules to govern its behaviour. I also tried to make it animated so you can follow the steps it takes when playing and who knows, maybe you’ll even get a new trick or two. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Happy rolling πŸ™‚