Life in Reterra Review

Life in Reterra is a game all about rebuilding community after an apocalypse scenario. Imagine that. Nature has reclaimed our once-thriving cities, and it’s up to the players to construct the most appealing community for prospective inhabitants.

First off though, check out the incredible illustrations! Seriously, this is top tier artwork. Extremely detailed, expressive and packed full of vibrant color, we love it!

The rules of this game are pretty complex, but to start, sort building tiles and building cards into their respective groups (with group 1 recommended for your first game). Give every player 3 random face-down land tiles, then 5 face-up tiles next to the game board, with the rest in 3 face down piles. On your turn, draw a new land tile to play and work toward your eventual 4×4 grid. On turns, you can elect to place building tiles or inhabitants on the gear icons. Land tiles have different terrains on them, and they don’t have to match when you place them in your grid, but to play building tiles, terrain must match, so it behooves you to match whenever possible. You can also only place a building tile or inhabitant as long as the land tile you just played is involved somehow, so don’t necessarily wait to capitalize on opportunities. Building tiles give you certain abilities that you can start using on your very next turn, so make sure to capitalize on them! Energy source tiles are worth points only if they’re surrounded by other land tiles. There are other sources of points too, like relic icons or tokens, inhabitants, and 7+ contiguous units of matching terrain. If your building tiles dictate it, you can even play junk tokens, which sabotage your neighbor’s (aka opponent’s) communities. Once everyone makes their 4×4 grid, use the score sheet to tally up points. Whoever earned the most points wins!

Life in Reterra is both as complicated as it looks, yet not. The basics aren’t too hard to get a handle on, but each building’s unique abilities will take time to get used to. Then there’s the different building sets with their own unique abilities. Also, you can make your own mixed building sets, examples of which they recommend in the back of the instructions.  Oh, did we also mention all building cards have a reverse side with slightly different ability text? Yeah, the basics, easy. The rest though? It takes a few games to even get a handle on, never mind strategize with. However, we can’t deny the uniqueness and charm of this game. Although it is complicated, it is quite well designed. Jump in with building set 1 after covering the basics in the instructions and start rebuilding society!