Introduction
In a post-apocalyptic world, humanity must recover and rebuild. What an original theme! Life in Reterra, designed by Ken Gruhl and Eric M. Lang, offers a new take on tile-placement games, blending elements of spatial planning, strategy and a bit of hate drafting. Published by Hasbro, this game aims to appeal to both a mass market and gamer audience. But does it succeed in delivering a simple yet deep enough experience for both audiences?
Components
The game’s packaging is visually amazing, with custom storage boxes that organize cards and tokens of different sets. The land tiles are thick and sturdy, featuring nice, if not repetitive, artwork of 4 terrain types. The wooden meeples, printed with charming character illustrations by Hugo Cuellar, add a charismatic touch to the game’s visuals. On top of this the game only uses paper and wood certified by the FSC, which corresponds to the rewilding theme.
Gameplay & Mechanics
At its core, Life in Reterra is a tile placement game where players draft and lay terrain tiles to construct a 4 by 4 grid. Each tile contains 4 terrain types and players must strategically place tiles to match terrain types and position cogs in order to place buildings and inhabitants to increase their score. This adds interesting decisions; do you want to put the tile there to complete that chain of 7 mountains you’ve been working on or there to complete the cluster of 3 cogs you need to place that farm you wanted to throw trash at your annoying neighbour. This added more depth and variable strategies than I expected for a mass market game. The game has great replay value with the 3 sets of buildings, creating new scoring criteria options to choose from every game. There being very of the 4 space buildings makes it a mad rush to build them first and stop other players. There are also junk tokens, which can be placed on other players landscapes to block certain icons and negate their score. While I see that this was a way to increase player interaction and stop a runaway leader, I think the drafting added enough interaction already. In my opinion, this was not a good way to solve this problem, as it can feel unfair for the victim and may cause family arguments.
Theme & Art
The game’s theme isn’t really reflected into its mechanics. The tile laying, while fun, at the end of the day is pretty abstract; match these colours or these icons (or both!). On the production side of things though, the artwork does a good job with adding charm and theme into the game. It is obvious a lot of effort went into this game to make it look good. While the game’s visual appeal is strong, the thematic storytelling could be more pronounced. Unlike other games, Life in Reterra focuses more on mechanics and production than world-building and storylines. So much could have been done with this theme, so I was slightly disappointed at the abstract feel of gameplay.
Final Thoughts
Life in Reterra is good in many aspects. The gameplay feels involved enough for it to not outstay it’s welcome with hobby gamers and is simple enough for the mass market audience to enjoy as well. This makes Life in Reterra a perfect game to introduce new people to the hobby with, as it introduces new mechanics, such as drafting, in a beginner friendly way. Unfortunately, the rulebook is below average, making the game difficult to pick up off the rules for newer gamers. Overall, the art and components are great, with a lot of charm and detail, even down to different inhabitant meeples. The building art is also full of character, but the building tokens themselves feel flimsy and cheap compared to the other high-quality components. The art has to do most of the heavy lifting for the theme, which could have been so much better reflected in gameplay. Replayability is very high due to the 3 different sets of buildings, each building with two different effects, and the possibility of mixing sets to match your groups play preferences. The player interaction of the junk I didn’t enjoy; It didn’t fit the cosy feel of the game, and it felt bad to have it happen to you. I think there were much better solutions than this. Overall, I think they succeeded in appealing to both audiences with great art and engaging gameplay, at the compromise of theme and feel. The decisions in this game are thinky without being complex which I really enjoyed. I recommend this game for anyone looking for a gateway game with great production that everyone can enjoy. I wouldn’t recommend Life in Retterra for a group of hardcore gamers who prefer games like Voidfall or On mars.
Pros & Cons of Life in Reterra
Pros:
- Engaging tile-placement mechanics – Offers a satisfying mix of strategy and spatial planning.
- High-quality art and production – Beautiful artwork, durable tiles, and well-designed storage solutions.
- Replayability – Variable building abilities and different strategies keep the game fresh.
- Appeals to both audiences – Deep yet simple gameplay that everyone can enjoy.
- Short playtime – Never runs too far off the time on the box
Cons:
- Inconsistent component quality – Building tiles feel and more flimsy than the other thick tiles.
- Limited theme – The post-apocalyptic setting is great in production but isn’t integrated in mechanics.
- Rulebook – Friendly, but lacks some major points, unanswerable questions in games.
- The junk mechanic – Feels unfair and a bad way to resolve a problem that was already fixed by the drafting
Rating: 70/100
A well-designed strategy game with strong mechanics and beautiful components, but still not the best for a group of hardcore gamers. Does strike a good balance to make an amazing gateway game.
