Earth (board game)

Earth is a 2023 board game designed by Maxime Tardif and published by Inside Up Games. Gameplay involves one to five players taking actions to play cards on individual boards in an fashion to score points. Developed beginning in 2017, the game was funded on Kickstarter in 2022 and released in 2023 to favorable reviews. It was considered to be one of the best board games of the year.

Gameplay
Earth is a card-based board game for one to five players. On each turn, players choose one of four actions: planting, composting, watering, or growing. The player making the selection gains resources, then each player can simultaneously use powers of cards on their personal board corresponding to the chosen action. Over the course of a game, players play cards, which represent plants and terrain, from their hands to personal 4-by-4 boards. Some cards have powers that are triggered once when played, while others have powers that can be used repeatedly.

Design and development
The game was designed by Maxime Tardif, a Quebec City pharmacist, who had previously designed games BrilliAnts and DiverCity. The first name for the game was Planeta Terra, but Earth was chosen as it was more understandable. Tardif's design goals for the game included giving players decision making power and making the game replayable, and to these end he chose to create an engine-builder game and designed over four hundred cards. Time-consuming parts of design included balancing the game's cards, for which Tardif developed a balancing engine in Microsoft Excel, and finding photography for the game, as the breadth of required images precluded hiring a single photographer.

Tardif met Conor McGoey of publisher Inside Out Games in 2017 at Gen Con, later showing the publisher a prototype of what would become Earth. Tardif chose Inside Out Games as he and McGoey often met at conventions, the two got along well, and Tardif believed a crowdfunding model would work well for the game. A campaign was held on Kickstarter in February 2022, reaching its funding goal in only two hours. Earth released on Earth Day, April 22, 2023. The first print run consisted of 25,000 copies, on top of the 6,000-7,000 needed to fulfill the backers of the Kickstarter campaign. The copies quickly sold out, prompting the publisher to hire more staff and order larger print runs.

Reception
Paste called the game's design "brilliant" and rated it 9.5/10, commenting that it ran smoothly and was satisfying despite its high cognitive load. Wargamer rated it 8/10, praising its simultaneous action system as addressing downtime, which they felt was the largest downside in other engine builders. They described the gameplay as smooth due to the constant action, but felt that this would reduce the time for social interaction between players. Tabletop Gaming opined that those who enjoyed low-conflict experiences would enjoy the game, finding the lack of player interaction divisive and comparing the game to a solitaire experience. Polygon called Earth one of the best board games of 2023, describing the interactions between the cards as deep and satisfying despite the relatively simple ruleset. Game Informer also considered the game one of the best of the year, citing its lack of downtime.

Multiple reviewers compared to Earth to Wingspan. Paste opined that it shared Wingspan's lack of player interaction, but otherwise took and improved on the good parts of Wingspan. Vulture described it as a more complex natural progression from Wingspan.

Earth was selected as "Best Board Game (European Style)" at the 2023 UK Games Expo, and won "Best Solo Game" at the 2023 International Gamers Awards. Though some speculated that Earth would be a contender for the 2023 Spiel des Jahres, it was not nominated for the award.