How to Save a World
- Michael Harrowing
- 22 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Designed by Yuval Grinspun, and published by Burnt Island Games, How to Save a World (HTSAW) is less an instructional game and more a statement of mild panic that you, the player, are required to resolve.
The gorgeous artwork from Fahed Alrajil and Tithi Luadthong on the front of the box and throughout the contents makes the premise of HTSAW very clear: a huge asteroid is on a collision course with the planet Alarria, and the globe has brought together the greatest known minds (that’s you!) to try and prevent the hurtling catastrophe.
The brightly coloured board depicts three projects to focus on in your attempts to save Alarria: a laser to destroy the asteroid, a shield to protect the planet, and - if those fail - the last ditch resort of planetary evacuation. As if to emphasise the point, a large eye-catching asteroid token looms over the board in a blazing ball of neon yellow and pink, edging ever closer to its impending apocalytic collision.
A small deck of starter cards may nudge players to focus in the direction of a particular end-game project but really players will find themselves reacting more to each other than anything else. ‘Should I race them up the project track and help to secure its success or should I invest elsewhere and attempt to nerf their efforts entirely?’ is a question that comes up frequently in one's mind over the course of the unpredictable 4-6 rounds.
The worker placement aspect of the game will be immediately obvious as each player has three ‘landers’ (two on the planet and one on the moon) with which they may collect resources, bump up their resource tracks, develop their tech powers, service their projects, and obtain cards from the market. Depending on where you place your lander, it may block others, and it may or may not end up flying off to the moon (or vice versa) depending on the location you chose.
The cards form the second key mechanic of HTSAW, as players may seek to build their deck with cards that give them an extra action or which will boost an action taken by their lander. Cards are not cheap and they increase in cost according to how many you have, but they generously refresh each round, and frequently have dual-use ‘tags’ to supplement the much-needed game resources. Finally, ‘species’ cards act as end-game point-scorers to try to game an edge on your competition.
With so much open information to be found in the locations and cards, the third and (literally) final ‘bag-builder’ mechanic blows all that predictability into smithereens - much like the asteroid that creeps ever nearer! For each progression on a project track, a correspondingly coloured cube will be added to the bag. At the end of each round, an increasing number of cubes are pulled from the bag and are either added to the final progress board (good for your gameplan) or increase the speed of the asteroid, so decreasing the number of rounds left. This unpredictable mechanic leaves everyone a little nervous about how many moves they have left and how successful their chosen project(s) will be; leading to a palpable tension on precisely what you should turn your attention to next.
The bag additionally rounds off the whole game as, at the very end, 10 cubes are pulled for each project, to determine their respective success or failure. Thematically this feels cinematic, as all your best laid plans can come to nothing in the face of an existential threat. Others, less enamoured with the theme, were quick to vocalise how the managed probability of the bag-building seemed an awful lot like luck!
With that in mind, this may be something of a Marmite game – the theme is strong, the gameplay is strong, the table-presence is strong, the journey of the game is strong – you just might have to accept it may all come to failure in the end! If you’re ok with that, then you should take the time to learn How to Save a World.
(Review by Michael Harrowing)
