Earth Express is exactly what it says on the tin. It takes the theme, graphics and core gameplay concepts from Earth and condenses them into a much quicker – but not necessarily lighter – game.

If you’re not familiar with Earth, it’s an engine building game where you create a tableau of plant and terrain cards which synergise to trigger powerful combinations and achieve objectives. Each turn the active player chooses an action to take, and all other players get to perform a weaker version of that same action.

If you ARE familiar with Earth, then you’re familiar with Earth Express!

Keep scrolling for my full review, or skip to the good part:

What changes from Earth

• Playable up to 8
• Plays in 15-30 mins
• Build a smaller 3×3 tableau
• Plant 2 cards every round (1 in the final round). There is no longer a plant action or soil cost to plant – a major factor in speeding up the game
• Action tiles determine the 2 actions you can choose from each turn
• Players take actions simultaneously, so you no longer gain something based on the actions of other players 

Solo mode

• You play against Demeter who starts with a 3×3 tableau of cards in play.
• Rather than drafting from a hand of cards, you draft from Demeter’s tableau, with empty spaces refilled each turn.
• Demeter will trigger actions of the single colour she has most of each turn, so as well as taking the cards you want, you want to make sure you’re not setting her up to get too many points
• Whenever she gains “something” she instead gains points with a handy board to track these, which means you’re not having to manage sprouts, growth or seeds for her.
• Demeter has variable difficulties which determine how soon she’ll claim objectives, how many times she activates her tableau at the end of the game, and how many points she scores for cards in her final tableau

A lovely, light automa to manage. Essentially all you need to do each turn is calculate points Demeter gains from her tableau which takes about 20 seconds, so this is ideal if you don’t enjoy managing a bot.

My thoughts

I love Earth but don’t own it as I’m not sure how often it would make it to the table for a solo game. I’d backed Earth Express on KS for that reason and having played the prototype I’m not regretting my choices! Personally I would say you dong neeeed to own both as the core gameplay is so similar, but they do provide different kinds of challenges.

You have to be more efficient with your choices as you have fewer chances to activate abilities, plant cards to achieve the fauna objectives and work towards ecosystem scoring. It’s pretty tight as an engine builder – having played Earth, my first game of Earth Express felt like there wasn’t enough time to build a good engine, so it takes some adapting to work with the smaller tableau and limited choices.

While turns are simultaneous, that doesn’t mean you won’t need to sit and wait for other players to finish making their choices. While 15 minutes is possible, with the thinking time and allowance for AP (there’s still a lot to think about for such a quick game, with 2 fauna objectives, potentially 3 ecosystem cards and your own terrain scoring, along with efficient placement for action chaining) 30 mins is more realistic, but still significantly quicker than its big sister. 

In a multiplayer game you pass your hand of cards to the person to your left, so at a higher player count you may only see that hand of cards once in the game – and even if it returns to you a lot will have changed. In the solo mode on the other hand, cards remain in Demeter’s tableau until you take or refresh them, so you can plan ahead far better. I thought it was interesting that they didn’t choose to refresh Demeter’s tableau each turn – which would more closely replicate a multiplayer game – but I personally prefer the ability to be able to plan ahead for cards I’ll take in future turns so don’t mind this at all!

TL;DR

If what you love about Earth (or any game) is combo-building and finding synergies, then Earth Express absolutely preserves that. But if you like Earth for the resource management and longer-term engine building then this is what Earth Express sacrifices in order to make it as quick a game as it is.

I really enjoyed this as a solo experience. A notable difference is that in a multiplayer game you pass hands of cards around players and so may not see the same hand twice. In solo, you take cards from the same selection each turn so there’s a much greater ability to plan ahead and optimise your game which I really enjoy.

Disclaimer: this is a prototype copy of the game provided by InsideUp Games for review purposes and final production copies will vary. All thoughts are my own.