It's a Wonderful World Review

Many people work 9-5 and spend the majority of their time filling out paperwork . . . to make room for the next pile of paperwork . . . all in the name of making the world . . . “a place.” However, if you want to step away from the grind and engage in an engine-building world in the name of creating a utopia . . . or . . . dystopia (it’s a little bit ambiguous), then you might enjoy It’s a Wonderful World (2019) designed by Frédéric Guérard, illustrated by Anthony Wolff, and published by Lucky Duck Games, Origames, and La Boîte de Jeu.

PeteSteele: Hey, Rick, do you want to help make the world a better place?

RickHendricks: That, actually, sounds incredibly difficult and expensive with absolutely no guarantee of success.

PeteSteele: What about just volunteering your time to mentor a kid, pick up trash on the beach, or donate to a local animal shelter?

RickHendricks: Oh. Okay, I thought you were talking about being part of some massive public works project.

PeteSteele: Um, no. Are we urban developers or civil engineers?

RickHendricks: Look, man. I’m right in the middle of psyching myself up for a Super Mario World speedrun. Can this wait?

PeteSteele: So . . . you’re continuing to do your part in making the world a…place.

RickHendricks: Kind of like what game reviewers do?

PeteSteele: Wow. Not cool. Game reviewers make the world go round. But I am going to capitalize on your what-does-it-all-mean doldrums mood.

RickHendricks: I sense a thinly-veiled transition ahead . . . 

PeteSteele: It’s a Wonderful World (2019) is an engine-building game where players take on the role of a national leader tasked with building up and expanding their nation or empire to the greatest extent possible and out-pacing their rivals. The game is for 1-5 players (with rules variants for 2-players and solo play), designed for players 14 and up, and advertised to play in approximately 45 minutes.

Here is what you get in the box of the base game: 1 game board, 5 double-sided empire cards, 150 development cards, 170 resource cubes (35 Materials, 30 Energy, 30 Science, 30 Gold, 30 Exploration, and 15 Krystallium), 80 character tokens (40 Generals and 40 Financiers), 1 round tracker token, 1 score pad, 1 rule book, and 1 set of Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy equipment (some assembly required). Well, okay. Not that last bit, but all of the other stuff comes in the box.

To set up a game of It’s a Wonderful World, start by assembling the game board and placing the round tracker on round 1 at the top. Next, shuffle all of the development cards to form a deck and place this, facedown, in the top left notch of the game board. Next, place the different resource cubes and character tokens on their respective spaces on the game board. Then, have all players collectively decide if they are going to play side “A” or side “B” of their empire card (all players must play the same side). Finally, players will place their respective empire card with the agreed upon side face up, making sure that they have enough room in front of them to play development cards in three different areas: the constructed cards area (directly above the right side of their empire card), the construction area, and the draft area. You are now ready to play!

Side "A" of the Empire Cards

Side "B" of the Empire Cards

Playing the game itself takes place over four rounds with each round broken up into three phases: draft phase, planning phase, and production phase. During the draft phase, each player is dealt 7 production cards face down. All players look at their cards, choose 1 and set it face down in their draft area, and then pass the rest of the cards to the player on their left or right, depending on the round of the game. This operation is continued until all cards have been chosen. 

During the planning phase, players make the decision for each of the cards they drafted during the draft phase by either moving a given card to their construction area or recycling it (discarding it) to receive a given card’s recycling bonus (a resource that can be used to construct other projects during the production phase).

Play then proceeds to the production phase which takes place over five steps: materials, energy, science, gold, and exploration. During each step, players count how much of each resource they currently produce (based on their starting empire card and any completed projects), then take those resources and add them to additional projects that are in their construction area. When a project has all of the materials necessary to complete it, it is immediately moved from the construction area to the empire and the materials are recycled back to their original piles on the game board (note: sometimes this can occur during the planning phase, as well). Different project cards will provide different bonuses for being completed, including: additional resources during production, one-time rewards, and victory points (needed to win the game). The phases then restart for rounds 2, 3, and 4.

At the end of the 4th round, players count up their victory points using the score pad, and the player with the highest score wins the game. In the case of a tie, the player with the most constructed cards in their empire wins. If there is still a tie, the player with the most total character tokens (generals and financiers) wins. If there is still a tie, the tied players share victory.

It’s a Wonderful World has a science-fiction-noir tone to it, perhaps taking place in the not-too-distant-future. The game depicts the construction of wind turbines and recycling plants, but also the building and use of 19th century Union Pacific Express steam locomotives—subtlety, but unwaveringly, implying that all in this “wonderful world” may not be as “wonderful,” and certainly not as equitable, as all who live (and play) in it may be indoctrinated to believe.

SarahVasa: This was one of my first engine-building games and, ultimately, I really liked it. It took me a game or two to grasp in a meaningful way, but after that I found this world of possibility. I did not play it for about a year and when I returned, I found it was easy to pick up again. While I remembered it as a game I really liked (dare I say, one of my favorites), playing it again (after learning other games in the meantime) allowed me to reassess it. I still think it’s a good game—one where I find myself getting quite competitive and immersed in the strategy—but it may be slightly less engaging than I remember it. Would I play it again? Absolutely. Would I want to play with different groups of people? Again, yes. But this is a game I would be satisfied playing every few months. I also quite enjoyed exploring the mechanistic differences between a two-player and four-player game, specifically how the drafting changed my strategy. Within a 2-player game, I was better able to strategize the entire drafting sequence, whereas for the four-player game I needed to make more impulsive drafting decisions that did not always pay off in the end.

PeteSteele: I agree. It is not a game I would want to play every week, but I can see myself (and I have) binging on it for a week and then putting it on the shelf, only to pull it down again six months later. This is a game that I can’t see myself getting rid of. 

Like so many engine-building games, at first, It’s a Wonderful World can feel like trying to disassemble and then reassemble a mechanical clock without any experience or instructions on how to do so. But after several play-throughs, the size, function, and position of each gear in the machine begins to make more sense, and players can start to realize just how much work went into designing and building the machine, and, more importantly, learn how to manipulate said machine and build it in a way that suits their play style and purpose. 

Where else but in the developing world of It’s a Wonderful World can you: build industrial complexes, construct mega drills, research quantum generators, fund underwater cities, and explore parallel dimensions?

Even with the abundance of cool things that you can build, construct, research, fund, and explore, the variable player starting resources and construction bonuses are areas where It’s a Wonderful World shines. If players are paying attention, these different starting powers can truly shape the type of world that players attempt to build in order to maximize their chance at victory. Perhaps even more interesting is when players, based on their own personal worldviews, are in line with the goals of their empire or cringe at the idea of needing to prioritize the construction of buildings over research, or financial development over exploration, and so on.

Personally, I prefer to play a research-oriented power, but what’s great is that when I play a financially-motivated power, I struggle to play my best game while also being forced to see things a little bit differently . . . all because of different starting resource production on a single card. To be honest, I think this is kind of fantastic. This is a game that makes you see the world through a different lens if you’re playing a power that is out of line with how you typically view the world. Yes, it’s just a game. Yes, maybe I’m over-interpreting. But maybe not. In short: If you want to see all that this game has to offer, you need to play all of the different empires with their variable starting resources and reward sides.

The rulebook is actually very manageable and can be fully read in under 30 minutes, including the sections for 2-players and solo variants. This design team did a wonderful job at including a number of component and board-set-up diagrams, and laid out text in easy-to-digest portions. 

While we love the implementation of the drafting mechanic in order to cut down on randomness of card selection, we found that we were all too often still at the mercy of card drawing. In many games of It’s a Wonderful World, we would create vast empires, and see our plans come to fruition by the end of round three or four. In some other games, however, none of the plans for our empires ever fully materialized due to the randomness of the cards in the draft. Perhaps this is the plight of leaders, but it made for a frustratingly unsatisfying game more often than we would have liked.

The names and illustrations on various cards make one think about the not-too-distant future, and the visuals help with player immersion in the presented game environment. That being said, aside from different cards requiring or producing seemingly accurate resources (such as the development of teleportation requiring extensive research and producing the special recourse of Krystallium), the cards do not sport any additional game mechanics or alteration of game rules already in place. This instilled a feeling that the theme of the game was painted on rather than fully integrated with the mechanics of the game.

We would’ve very much enjoyed a version of It’s a Wonderful World where research cards allowed you to trade them out or get bonuses for other research cards; financial developments allowed for more in game bonuses; exploration provided card advantage; vehicles allowed you to attack (or at least to visit) other players’ empires for greater player interaction; and buildings bolstered the infrastructure of your empire so that a player could to be able to produce Krystallium more affordably. These are some of our ideas straight off the top.

There are currently three expansions available for the retail edition of It’s A Wonderful World (all with the same designers, illustrators, and publishers as the base game). The It’s A Wonderful World: War or Peace (2020) and It’s A Wonderful World: Leisure & Decadence (2020) expansions each add their own campaign to the base game, both of which may be played solo or against other players. 

War or Peace expansion

Leisure & Decadence expansion

In the War or Peace expansion campaign, players work their way through five scenarios (5 games of It’s A Wonderful World with scenario-specific narrative, rules, and content) with a story arc guiding the world towards peace or a world war. While players will play through 5 scenarios, the War or Peace campaign actually offers 6 scenarios in total. Players are instructed to play either scenario 5 or scenario 6 depending on the outcome of scenario 4, but they will never play both scenario 5 and scenario 6 in a given campaign. 

The Leisure & Decadence expansion campaign adds an additional six-scenario campaign to the It’s a Wonderful World . . . world. Each of the scenarios unlocks new card content—some of which is designed to be unlocked for the duration of a campaign only, and other card content may be permanently unlocked and added to the cards in the base game for future use in non-campaign play.

We will point out, for whomever may be interested, that the War or Peace and Leisure & Decadence expansions were both part of the It’s A Wonderful World: Heritage Edition, which was available during the original Kickstarter campaign for the game. While the Kickstarter version is no longer available, both of these expansions are now available in retail formats.

It’s a Wonderful World came out with another full expansion, It's a Wonderful World: Corruption and Ascension (2020). This expansion adds a second deck of projects with a different card back that are not integrated into the base project deck, but are played alongside it. This new deck of cards adds four new card types: Corruption cards (taking away some of your production, but supplying other production), Master Project cards (massive undertakings that you may or may not complete, but offer large point rewards), Super Production cards (providing resources, resources, and more resources), and Duo Scoring cards (more ways to score points for more paths to victory). If you like the base game of It’s a Wonderful World, we definitely recommend Corruption and Ascension.

I will say that this is a game that we would blindly pre-order another expansion for should one be released. That being said, what would really, really get us excited is if a new It’s a Wonderful World expansion provided more player interaction, which brings us back to our largest complaint about this game: the low level of player interaction. This is a fairly common complaint of ours with many engine-building games, to be sure; But given the high theme components and full-card art within It’s a Wonderful World, the lack of player interaction seemed to be out of step, and we certainly felt it.

That being said, if you are fans of morally ambiguous, not-too-distant-future science-fiction and engine building, this game is absolutely for you. However, if those things do not particularly turn your head, especially engine building, then we recommend you give this one a pass. However, as great lovers of morally ambiguous science-fiction, full-card illustrations, and engine building, we do give It’s a Wonderful World the Corax & Coffee Seal of Distinction. It is, however, much too expansive to be easily played on an average-sized coffee shop table, so no cafe approved banner for this particular world of cardboard.

This game will absolutely stay in our collection for the long-term, and while it certainly is not a gateway game, it would be one of my first choices to show individuals who had decided to step through the door into the world of gaming and wanted to see “a next step.” Maybe we could call this a “gateway game 201” or “301,” rather than “101.” But it still has notable staying power for people who have been around the game table for a number of years, such as ourselves.

RickHendricks: Pete, you say that it is not clear if this game is depicting a utopia or dystopia . . . 

PeteSteele: Yes, that’s true. It’s entirely unclear and open to interpretation, why do you bring it up?

RickHendricks: Well, there are no book burnings, no rocket bombs, no soma . . . it feels like it really is depicting the world on a good trajectory. 

PeteSteele: There is also no literature and only scarce depictions of vapid attempts to achieve equilibrium with nature. Only a drive for ever greater and greater production.

RickHendricks: Don’t be such an elitist. That production serves to increase happiness for everyone, and that happiness serves a purpose: it keeps the wheels steadily turning.

PeteSteele: If you say so, Mustapha Mond.

It's a Wonderful World (2019) earns Corax & Coffee's Seal of Distinction!