Terraforming Mars

Fix an entire planet. Get there before the others take the good asteroids.

The 2400s, and the World Government has licensed the corporations to make Mars habitable. You run one of them, pushing up the temperature, the oxygen level and the ocean coverage while quietly ensuring the credit lands on your own balance sheet. Jacob Fryxelius designed it, the production is famously plain, and almost nobody minds.

You buy, hold and play project cards into a tableau, building an engine that pays out every generation. The three global parameters act as a shared clock: when they max out the game ends, whether or not you were ready for it. Card draw matters a great deal, so it rewards adapting to what turns up rather than planning a route from turn one. Around two hours once everybody knows what they are doing, and appreciably longer before that.

Perfect for: Anyone who has ever started a spreadsheet for something that was supposed to be a hobby.

1–5 players | 120 minutes | Age 12+

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