A melting pot of familiar mechanisms that blend together excellently - particularly for fans of huge (and I mean HUGE) combos. On the face of it Revive’s official solo mode seems simple to operate and enjoyable to play but on closer inspection it lacks meaningful challenge and acts more as a simplistic, no restrictions training mode. Hurrah though for the Mautoma solo variant which steps in to save the solo day…
Revive
Designer: Helge Meissner, Eilif Svensson, Anna Wermlund, Kristian Amundsen Østby
Publisher: Aporta Games
2022
How to play:
A frozen earth. A big huge hole slap bang in the middle. You and your tribe climbing out of that hole ready to revive civilisation. Survivors to recruit and harness their dual use card loveliness, corners to try and reach to fulfil some strategic goals and a big huge player board of interweaving tracks to programme with powers and bonuses.
Start by deciding whether you want to work through an introductory 5 game ‘campaign’ - a tutorial which gradually introduces elements of the game for those that feel the need for a more gentle sail through the rules and components. Alternatively decide whether you want to tear off the elastoplast and just dive ‘all in’ for your first game. Either way, grab a two sided tribe board - the ‘sun’ side will have an easy asymmetrical power or the ‘moon’ side which has a relatively more complex / ‘thinky’ version of that asymmetrical power. For multiplayer games this will enable new players to find their feet amongst more experienced players – or for solo play you might feel using the easier sun side is a good introduction to the game before feeling confident enough to then play on the moon side from that point forth. I won’t confirm or deny whether that incremental approach forms part of the campaign or not (ahem)!
Once you have decided which tribe you want to play as (or the campaign has instructed you which to play as) grab a player board – you aren’t going to miss them anytime soon: huge mats with intertwining green, yellow and grey tracks, circles dotted all over, slots to place cards and so on. Talking of cards, grab your starting deck of six cards and place half of them face down by that player board in a resting deck – you will retrieve them later but for now you shall start with a starting hand of three cards.
You’ll have spent a bit of time during set up covering the main board randomly with (a lot of) tiles that represent a frozen world ready for you to rediscover and inhabit. A smattering of starting tiles near the centre of the board have already thawed and are read for you to start inhabiting from your starting ‘chasm’ space slap bang in the middle of the board.
Choose one out of two randomly drawn ‘objective cards’ – it will offer some strategic focus for the game and some tasty end game VP to work towards.
Ok, off we go…
Actions are going to largely involve:
• Populating a city space on the main board with one of seven people from a tech tree on your tribe mat. Each time you populate you will reveal end game VP as well as another unique power that your tribe will be able to utilise for the rest of the game. In order to populate however you’ll need to pay both a ‘food’ resource for every space between where you place your person and either the starting centre space in the board (for your first placement) or from something (anything) else that you have placed on the board during a previous turn. This idea of needing to pay food costs to cover distance ('range') runs throughout the game. As well as paying that food cost for your range you will also be paying an increasing amount of a ‘books’ resource to unlock the people to be placed on the board in the first place.
• Build: take one of the buildings from your tribe mat, pay its ‘gears’ resource cost and place the building on the main board adjacent to one or more of either a forest, mountain or field space (the colours corresponding with the green, yellow and grey tracks on your large player board) and / or a ‘lake’ space. If you build a small building, move up the tracks on your player board once for each adjacent forest, mountain or field space - twice if you build a large building. If you build adjacent to a lake space, retrieve a crate from the bottom of the lake and claim its onetime bonus. Don’t forget though, you are going to have to pay that same food / range cost like when you populated - paying for the distance from where you want to build in relation to something else of yours that is already on the board. Steady, incremental growing outwards to those tiles on the board that have already thawed out that then allow you to populate and build on them. Expand out eventually far enough to one or more of the four corners of the board and you will be rewarded with some end game VP dependent on how well you have met any conditions displayed on that specific final corner tile (eg number of gained crystals, number of buildings you have used etc)
• Explore: flip over a new tile on the board so that you can start to populate and build on it (and you've guessed it, pay the relevant food / range cost). There will be a clue on the tile as to what might be underneath it – perhaps a lake? Perhaps a mountain? Perhaps a city space to populate on? What we do know is though that discovering the new tile to inhabit is going to cost you resources but will gain you some immediate VP as well as letting you choose a ‘Citizen’ card from a shared market of cards to place into your hand. On the topic of those citizen cards…
• Play a card from your hand into one of four (and possibly five later in the game) slots on your main player board. The cards have resources and other bonuses on both the top and the bottom and you are going to have to choose carefully as to whether to place your card in the top of your player board and claim its top bonus or place it in the bottom and claim the bottom bonus. This becomes quite an agonising decision as the game goes on: you will regularly get the opportunity to add coloured ‘modules’ to these card slots on your player board with a bonus printed on them. So now for example, every time I place a green card into a card slot that has a green module then I get to claim both the card's bonus and the module bonus. But if I place a yellow card in that slot with a green module I would only get the card bonus. So here I am having to think about not only whether I place a card in the top or the bottom of my board, but also which specific slot I use to maximise the goodies that I receive.
The coloured tracks on your player board intertwine and after certain points have been reached on each of them you can choose a tile with an ongoing power to programme into your player board - triggering that power as a free action by using ‘energy’ (start with one energy but gain more as the game goes on). Turns are now starting to pop big time: Build a building, move up some tracks, upgrade your board with a power, trigger that power to play a card for free, the card gets you resources and the ability to play another card for free, you play that other card that lets you perform one of your characters special actions. Kaboom.
As you use your cards, spend your resources and combo your erm, combos eventually you are going to run out of things that you can do and you grind to a halt. At that point (or indeed whenever you want) you can choose instead of taking a turn to ‘hibernate’: taking all of the cards from your resting area back into your hand, putting all of the cards you have played thus far into that resting area, take back all of the energy that you used to trigger any ongoing powers programmed into your player board and finally gain a little bonus for your hibernating troubles.
Throughout the game as you move up one or more of the many tracks or gain immediate VP from your general play then you will occasionally get the chance to discover and claim a ‘Major Artifact’ – a limited number of purple, grey or orange artifacts from a communal pool. The colour of those artifacts link directly with the Objective Card that you chose at the start of the game – you know, the card that gives you some goals to work towards; place people out on the board, have built next to crystal spaces etc. Each objective card has three different goals with a corresponding colour and for each major artifact that I have collected during the game that matches the colour of the objective that I may have been working toward for some end game VP then I find myself with a very tasty multiplier. So for example, if my purple objective was to place people out of the board and as a result get 1VP each time and I place 6 people out during the game? 6VP. If I picked up two purple Major Artifacts throughout the game though that changes to a much better 18VP at the end of the game!! So you better believe that I am trying to not only meet my objectives but ALSO trying to get to as many of those artifacts as possible.
In the multiplayer game the game ends once the final major artifact has been claimed. The solo game instead relies on on a ‘set number of actions’ timer. Count up the VP you gained during the game along with the VP you have gained if you reached one or more corners of the main board, plus the VP from your completing any of the objectives card (multiplied by any major artifacts that you have collected along the way). If you are anything like me then you will hang your head in shame at how poorly you scored and hope to do much better in your next game.
Solo Headlines:
I don’t mind Beat Your Own Score (BYOS) solo modes. In an ideal world I probably would like a very simple automated opponent that had minimal upkeep to try and score against. Failing that, I might like a BYOS game to have something else to keep my attention – perhaps some win conditions. But I’m still ok with a straight up BYOS which is what we have here with Revive. If that isn’t your thing, thanks for reading this far and I hope to see you again sometime soon. Take care.
Revive’s solo mode also lulls me into an early sense of ease. As I look through the rulebook I see that there aren’t any additional rules. No separate rulebook, no thumbing through to the last few pages to see how the solo mode works - just some references dotted throughout the main rulebook flagging up some minor changes here and there for those that will be playing solo. It’s often the curse of the solo playing fan of mid-heavy euros to have to always learn the rules of new games AND then have to learn an additional set of solo rules so I breathed a big sigh of relief at the respite that Revive’s solo mode was offering me. That said, any respite from complex solo rules was balanced out by a lengthy set-up and tear down – no sharing the set-up load with other players. You are very much on your own here with quite a chunky and tedious set up. Groan.
In practice the solo mode here is no more than just playing the game single handed: see how much you can achieve in a set number of turns and how high can you get your score. For the first couple of games that felt quite enjoyable. Revive is a game filled with combos and being able to roam around the game unimpeded by others trying to find those combos was great; turn after turn exploding, everything on offer, everything at my disposal. The question wasn’t about whether I would score well but just how massive the final scores would be. The dopamine hits are great as you get to the end of the game and see that you possibly could have done a little better but regardless everything feels like it has been done exceedingly well and VP is off the charts. Its an ego boost...
...but very quickly after those initial soaring highs of feeling invincible reality sinks in. You see, I actually quite enjoy losing at games. I enjoy feeling challenged. I enjoy trying to uncover a games secrets and see my scores go from dreadful to average and very occasionally if I do particularly well I might reach the giddy height of ‘slightly above average’. What instead Revive provides me with as a solo player is a Training Mode: play the game without any interference or competition or challenge and see how you get on. That is fine for the first game, maybe two. After that I need something more.
Revive solo is also committing one of my cardinal sins. If a multiplayer game sees players competing for spaces on the main board and sees races to reach certain rewards first, sees players getting their grubby hands on things first from a shared market that I already had my eye on - then when a solo mode of the same game doesn’t also do those things then I feel a little hard done by. I don’t even need anything particularly intelligent in the solo mode, just some very crude competition for those same spaces and resources – to have the game make me pivot when a space gets taken, curse its existence when the card I wanted gets snaffled, flip over the table when a move that I have been planning for a couple of turns unravels. It’s those moments that makes me want to play Euro games; long term strategic goals coupled with plans being scuppered and new paths to victory having to be found. It felt unforgivable to not implement something extremely simple to provide the solo player with some basic competition for spaces and resources. It is unforgivable. Revive is an excellent multiplayer game but for others like me that play exclusively solo I just couldn’t recommend it as I don’t feel it would have any longevity beyond a couple of initial exciting enough plays. That said…
….after an excellent experience with the unofficial but utterly superb Mautoma solo variant for Brass: Lancashire and Brass: Birmingham my interest was piqued well and truly when Mauro put a call out for play-testers for his take on Revive’s solo mode, I answered the call and with his Mautoma variant for Revive now available to all I am happy to confirm that it does exactly what I needed Revive’s solo mode to do. Ok, it’s still a beat your own score so if that isn’t your preference then you are still going to be disappointed. Otherwise you now you have a really simple 5 cards to flip and some straightforward but still somewhat intelligent competition for spaces and resources. It lifts the solo mode brilliantly. Could a more complex automa be developed 'Turczi style' to mimic exactly a 2p game and have you competing against a point scoring opponent? Probably. Am I happy that Mauro has kept things simple but brilliantly effective? Absolutely. So now that I have a satisfying solo mode I can start talking more generally about the game more broadly.
(Oh and before I move on: c.60 minute games with the Mautoma solo mode, probably 45 mins with the official solo mode. Either way, build in 15mins either side for set up and tear down)
General Headlines:
Let’s start with Revive’s ‘campaign’ – a 5 game tutorial where some of the games complexities are incrementally revealed. Do you have to play through the 5 games? Nope. You could just dive straight in and learn all of the rules and start playing. If you are comfortable with mid-heavy Euro games already then there is nothing here that will feel too difficult to grasp, particularly as a lot of the concepts and mechanisms in Revive feel quite familiar. That said, I did play through the first 4 games of the campaign and I quite enjoyed not having to tackle a heavy ruleset up front. On the other hand, that first game felt a little underwhelming and light for my personal tastes but eventually a few plays in it cranked up to something just above medium weight. Each to their own - work through the campaign or don’t. The world won’t end either way.
While they are two very different games mechanically, Revive shares a fair a bit thematically with firm favourite Scythe; asymmetric factions slowly rediscovering a previously uninhabitable world. That ‘inhabiting a world unexplored’ setting is a particularly difficult one for me to get really enthused about. I think Scythe did a really great job of world building and making the ‘gradually move outwards and do a bit area control’ stuff feel vibrant and alive. Revive doesn’t quite hit those Scythe heights but it makes a reasonable effort of trying to pull off a tricky theme – as Boonlake will testify to (though what Boonlake lacks in theme it more than makes up for in gameplay). While the setting might be a little sparse here, at least Revive has those asymmetric factions which do feel quite distinct from each other and that aforementioned campaign offers some limited world building / scene setting. One missed opportunity however is the many cards that you will gain throughout the game that represent ‘citizens’ helping you. The artwork for these cards are all largely the same. I know this will most likely be keeping the cost down which is totally understandable and it’s not a dealbreaker but some unique artwork on the cards might have helped lift Revive thematically closer to those Scythe highs. Perhaps an expansion or two might build the world a little more and add some variety to the card art, we shall see.
Revive feels a bit like a ‘Greatest Hits’ selection of elements and mechanisms all thrown into a giant melting pot and stirred together. There was a danger that what came out of the oven could have been an incoherent mess. But I use the term Greatest Hits deliberately as there is a lot here that I really like and as it happens, it all blends together well…
The six asymmetric factions that you can play as feel really distinct with each one starting with a significant power along with some smaller powers that can be unlocked as the game progresses. Each tribe forces you in to approaching your individual game differently each time. I’m not usually a fan of asymmetric player powers when playing with other people as I like to feel that we are all playing within the same parameters and ‘may the best person win’. Solo however I like the variety of being a new character each game and exploring the differences. I worked through all of the characters in Revive and they all felt fun and unique and added extra dimensions to have to think through as I took my turns. Really enjoyable. And again, I can see expansions bringing new characters and adding more enjoyment and more of that world building.
Dual use cards are great in Revive. I could slot a card into the top of my player board and gain its top bonus but then aaaargggh, I don’t get to then use its bottom bonus. And vice versa. I’m a big fan of games that make me sacrifice something good in order to do something else good. Revive and its dual use cards has that it bucketloads.
Talking about the player board, there is probably more than enough game on this board alone – it’s excellent. Not only can I move up the three (green, yellow and grey) tracks on the board as I place buildings on the main board adjacent to a forest, field or mountain space(s) but the tracks intertwine. Moving up tracks lets you regularly claim ongoing bonuses that can be used from that point forward. At first glance it seems like it’s a case of ‘move up the green track and get green bonuses’. Indeed your first early bonus / power up on each of the tracks does work like that but from that point forward all of the tracks start to collide and connect. Future bonuses will need you to have reached specific points on more than one track to unlock it - I may well have reach point number 10 on the green track and have reached two bonuses to unlock but until I have also reached a certain point on the yellow track and connected with those green spaces then the bonus remains out of reach. I really enjoyed this tension of not being able to just spam one track but instead having to give thought to the other tracks - timing my movements on them so that they connected up at the best times, chewing over the best places to build on the board that would let me move up multiple tracks. Once I have moved up all the correct tracks to unlock a bonus I then I have to mull over which ongoing bonus / power I am going to slot in to my player board. Which ones might offer the best synergy with how I am currently playing the game? Which might make me ponder the possibility of changing directions a little? The only downside of such interweaving tracks is that its quite difficult to see at a glance where everything is and where all the connections are and I found myself getting lost in the intertwines on more than one occasion. This isn’t just climbing a ladder. It’s a swirling chaotic mess of interweaving tracks. An enjoyable chaotic mess though.
The programming of the player board doesn’t stop there. Those modules that you can plug into your playboard that reward you if you player a similar coloured card into a particular slot is great. Should I put lots of yellow modules in that one card slot? Should I grab different coloured modules for when I use different coloured cards? Should I pad out my top card slots with these modules or will I be mainly using the bottom slots on my player board? Some really nice pause for thought and chin stroking when programming the player board – especially when coupled with the ongoing powers that you might also be gaining when you clear the people from the tech tree on your player board. As the game goes on it feels like everywhere you look your powers are getting stronger and stronger.
I really enjoy games that give me clear strategic objectives from the get go – games that let me spend 5 minutes before I have even took my first turn mulling over the board state and making decisions on what I am going to try and achieve by the end of the game (whether I get there or not is another question however). Revive scratches that itch well for me; each of the four corners of the board have a goal displayed on them that changes game to game). Shall I try to reach one or more of the corners, working towards that goal as I go? I get two objective cards at the start of the game each with three objectives on them – getting to keep one and discarding the other. Which of those take my fancy? Do either of them chime with those goals at the corners of the board? My starting hand – does it steer me towards any of the objectives? My asymmetric player power – does that seem to chime with any objectives? Lots of pre-game strategic goal setting and then off I go trying my hardest to meet the goals.
….and then not only are you working towards those strategic goals but racing to reach those Major Artifacts that will multiply the VP on your completed objectives. Just like with the tracks on the main board you cant just spam one part of your game and keep reaping Major Artifacts as a reward. The ability to gain a much coveted Major Artifact is dotted all over the place ensuring that as well as having clear strategic focus and needing to do one thing really well you will also have some pull back and have to also do at least a little bit of everything else in order to be successful. Chasing these Major Artifacts is an excellent race and brings in some nice pressure and tension.
Combos. Combos. Combos. Combos. Combos. Combos. Combos. Combos. Combos. Combos. There are combos to be had EVERYWHERE. You are 100% going to get lost in your turns - indeed the game gives you an aid with the main turns displayed on it with a couple of cubes to pop on the card to indicate which turn you have taken so that you don’t forget as you very quickly fall down combo rabbit holes. Turns spiral. Indeed playing Revive well depends on you actively trying to find these combos - how can you make your turn last for as long as possible and create as many chain reactions as possible in order to not use up a main turn / action but see one action turn into about 5 different and free sub actions. Very satisfying when they explode, and they explode often.
I also really enjoyed the games ‘hibernation’ mechanism – that moment where you find yourself unable to take any more meaningful turns as you have used up all of the cards from your hand, resources have dwindled and everywhere you look you think ‘nope, I cant do anything else here’. On the face of it the Hibernation means that you waste a turn to reset things and gain back those cards that are in your resting area. But in addition to getting a minor bonus so things don’t feel too deflating, there is also something quite smart going on underneath the hood. You see, I totally could wait until I have exhausted all other moves and wrung out every last drop of sweat before needing to hibernate. But what if I did it earlier? What if I could still do a good few things but chose to hibernate a turn or two early to reset some powers and get some cards from the resting deck that I know are going to help me. I don’t have to wait. The Hibernation here offers some good hand management opportunities – eek out a few final turns with the cards that I have or bring some of those excellent ones that I know are just sitting there back into my hand.
And finally, while I may have had a mild moan earlier about the set up and tear down, it is worth noting that the variable set up does mean that each game felt different as I chased different blends of goals. Definitely one that keeps you coming back for more to see how the next game might play out.
At a Glance:
+ Lots of tried and tested, familiar mechanisms that blend together into an enjoyable game.
+ Turns can explode down some satisfying combo holes
+ Asymmetric tribes feel distinct and have great individual powers to explore
+ The intertwining player boards that can be programmed are fun and almost a game of itself.
+ Dual use cards make for some agonising decisions.
+ Great variability game to game keeps things fresh.
+ / - Theme doesn’t cut through massively
+ / - Those that don’t like Beat Your Own Score solo modes will be disappointed
- The official solo mode feels more like a simplistic training mode. Some may initially enjoy its simplicity but it quite quickly becomes too easy. The unofficial Mautoma solo variant resolves most issues however.
Final Score:
• Solo mode out of the box: 6.5 out of 10 (it a perfectly fine training mode for the game but one with no real challenge)
• Solo with the Mautoma solo variant: 8 out of 10
Reviewed after 11 plays.