Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars is a strategy board game designed by Jacob Fryxelius and published by FryxGames in 2016. It places players in the twenty-sixth century, when the World Government has authorized corporations to make Mars habitable. Each player controls one corporation competing to raise three global parameters: oxygen, temperature, and the amount of water-covered surface. The game ends when oxygen reaches 14 percent, temperature reaches 8 degrees Celsius, and nine ocean tiles have been placed. Victory then depends on a corporation's accumulated Terraform Rating and other points.

Gameplay combines card drafting, tableau building, and resource management. On a turn, a player may take one or two actions, including playing a project card, claiming a milestone, funding an award, or using a card's action. Project cards represent scientific, industrial, and ecological interventions, from placing a city or greenery tile to building Jovian infrastructure or extracting resources. Cards have printed requirements and costs, and many remain in a corporation's tableau, producing income, production, tags, or special effects. Players pay mainly with mega credits, while steel, titanium, plants, energy, and heat can provide specialized discounts or later conversions.

At the beginning of each generation, players draft four cards, choosing which to keep and paying three mega credits for each retained card. They then take turns until everyone passes. A generation also includes production, in which corporations gain resources and adjust their production tracks. The board uses hexagonal spaces in three main regions: the standard Mars map, Hellas, and Elysium. Oceans occupy designated blue-bordered spaces, while cities and greenery interact spatially: greenery beside a city can score points, and cities generally cannot be adjacent to one another. These placement rules make the shared map a central source of competition.

The design is notable for combining a competitive economy with a shared planetary objective: all corporations help complete the same terraforming project, yet only one wins. Its corporation cards give the setting distinctive identities. Inventrix benefits from flexible requirements; Tharsis Republic focuses on cities and Mars development; Helion can treat heat as money; and Ecoline specializes in plant production. Prelude to Terraforming Mars, released in 2017, adds prelude cards that give corporations and the opening generation different starting advantages, accelerating the early game. Other official expansions include Hellas and Elysium, Venus Next, Colonies, and Turmoil. It won the 2017 Deutscher Spiele Preis, an important German award, reflecting its strong reception among dedicated board-game players internationally.