Friday, February 19, 2016

I found a mini-review of Terra Prime, by BGG user Rachel Schnoor (tartujik) -- Thanks for playing!

 I came across this mini-review on BGG of my first published game, Terra Prime. It was buried in a geeklist by user Rachel Schnoor (tartujik). It warmed my heart a little bit to see such a positive review, even now... 7 years after the game came out:

This is also a pick-up-and-deliver space game, but it plays with more people than the last one I listed (up to 5 players), is longer, incorporates fighting as well, and has little cubes for goods (and sometimes you just want to play with little cubes). The goods are names brownian, greenium, bluim which gives you an idea of how seriously this game takes itself. The art is really fun too. You have to watch out for asteroids, fight aliens, explore new areas of space, set up mining colonies for the different resources, etc. To help you combat the hardships of space and to give you an extra edge - you can buy upgrades, but to do so you'd have to use cubes you can get victory points for, so it's a trade off. I guess this game hints at 4x type stuff, but really it feels more pick up and delivery to me - the rest of your options are there, but are less of a focus. For example - in order to fight aliens effectively you have to upgrade your ship, in order to upgrade your ship you have to pick up little cubes required to purchase upgrades, in order to pick up little cubes you got to lark around space a bit - you get the point. Most of the baddies are out in deeper space anyway, so you have the option to avoid (the super bad ones anyway) by avoiding deep space... on the other hand, you get extra victory points for exploring the most dangerous depths of the unknown. Anyway, this game is colorful and light-hearted, but don't let it's image fool you - it's got a lot of strategic options - AND is just a real good time. Fair warning though - there were many print run problems with this game so if you pick up a copy make sure to ask plenty of questions about the status of the components.

I'm glad people are still playing Terra Prime here and there. It'll be awesome to see those that enjoyed the game come out of the woodwork when the game gets rebooted as Eminent Domain Origins (probably next year)!

1 comment:

AlexC said...

Hee! I hadn't heard anything beyond speculation about the Terra Prime reprint / revamp. Delighted to hear that's going ahead!