Earth 2053: Tipping Point

Designed by Dario Reinhardt and Fabian Fisher, and published by Crimson Company, Earth 2053: Tipping Point is a cooperative (and solitaire) game where the 1-4 players represent countries around the world trying to address the effects of climate change. By 2053, the planet is at a tipping point - literally so in this game because pollution tokens are placed out on a seesaw that players have to keep balanced through their collective responses to environmental and climate-change induced events. Players win by filling the seesaw with counterweight green tokens. The game may be built around the punning combination of theme and mechanic in the Tipping Point seesaw but we've been pleasantly surprised to find the seesaw isn't a mere gimmick...

Players' decisions have various impacts on a rondel-style board. You'll need the benefits generated on the rondel but increasingly you'll find these also generate pollution - adding to the risk of losing the game on the tipping point seesaw. Disasters are event cards that turn up and they have to be tackled with appropriate project cards and the payment of 'credits' (money) and 'influence' from the relevant segment of your rondel board. When you successfully deal with a threat, you get to place green tokens out on the seesaw as a counterweight to the pollution but for every round that a threat remains unresolved more pollution tokens go out on the seesaw...

Just as world leaders can sometimes come across as overly complacent so there's a risk of players getting lulled into a false sense of security early on in the game. The initial event cards are relatively easy to deal with but the difficulty level escalates through the course of the game. You can scale the difficulty level tho' by altering the mix of disaster cards in the deck.

We've enjoyed Earth 2053: Tipping Point both as a solitaire and a cooperative game but if your experience matches ours at Board's Eye View, you will probably want to set the difficulty level of cooperative plays a notch up from how you'll play as a solo game.

Most of our plays have run to around 75 minutes. The colour matching of cards and segments of the rondel-style player board helps to streamline play, and the various powers of different leader cards and the differing resources of the various countries you can choose to play all add to the game's replayability. Oh - and seasoned gamers will appreciate the 'Easter egg' tribute of featuring some well-known board game designers on the world leader cards.

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