Sunday, August 10, 2014

Review: The Game of Life Twists and Turns



 

Game Overview 
Life Twists and Turns is a reimagining of an old classic. While the familiar themes of driving around the board, acquiring a career, getting married, and having children, are all present, the gameplay is vastly different.  The game can be set to last anywhere from 1 to 50 turns requiring players to adjust their strategies and balance their time on the board in order to earn the most life points and win the game.    
 
Rules Summary 
Each player receives a credit card to be inserted into the lifepod each turn. The lifepod is an electronic device that replaces the spinner from the original game and keeps track of almost everything for all players including income, marital status, number of children, type of car and house owned, money in the bank and the number of life points earned. At the end of the game, the lifepod makes final calculations and declares the winner.
 

The game board is divided into four sections: live it, love it, learn it, and earn it.  In these sections, players are able to complete many accomplishments which influence the amount of money earned every turn and, more importantly, the number of life points earned every turn.
 
Live It:  Players fund adventures in order to earn life points. 
 
Love It:  Players are able to get married and have children.  Expanding the family provides a lot of life points every turn for the rest of the game but the more children you have, the less money you get to keep from your paycheck.
 
Learn It:  Allows players to earn a degree and/or a PhD which unlocks higher paying jobs on your career track.
 
Earn It:  Players are able to get promotions and advance their career tracks.
 

Components

 
Life pod:  The components in this game are fun. Having an electronic device that keeps tracks of everything for you seems a little sky-netish but it is what makes the game interesting. The downside is that the calculations can get very complicated.  For instance, all money acquired during the game is sold off to buy life points at the end of the game but the formula to do this is random every game. The manual briefly explains how the calculations are done throughout the game but there are so many of them and they change so much during a game that it is hard to track. It is much easier to just let the lifepod figure it out and not think about it too much. I have read on the internet that the calculations listed in the manual do not exactly match up to the lifepod. I have not actually done the math to confirm this myself, but I don’t believe the calculation differences actually impact the game very much since they are the same for all players.
 
 
 
Player Boards:  Each player gets a player board which is used to hold their career cards and to mark major milestones including the completion of a degree, marriage, etc. While these boards and clips are made well, they don’t have to be used much since the lifepod tracks most of these things for you.
 
 
Life Cards:  Many of the spaces on the board are blank. On these spaces, the player draws a life card and reads the sentence corresponding to the quarter of the board they are on. There are many of these cards in the game and they add some variety and humor to the game. Most of the cards allow the players to gain or lose money or life points. A few allow you to mess with other players.
 
 
 
Final Thoughts
 
Positives
  • I don’t have to count out paper money or do math every turn
  • Easy to get non-gamers to play (even my mom)
  • Adjustable game length
Negatives
  • There are a lot of calculations going on behind the scenes so it can be hard to know how you are doing until the final calculations are complete
  • There are very few differences between career cards
  • Too many salary and life point modifiers make it hard for players (especially new players) to remember
 

How this game made it into my collection:
This was a $5 thrift shop find. I had never even heard of this game before but I remembered playing the original Life so I decided to give it a shot.  We have played it a bunch of times already and have enjoyed it. 


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