Get into…Life of the Amazonia overview
‘The Amazon Rainforest makes up more than half of the Earth’s Rainforest and produces more than 20% of our planet’s oxygen. It is also mother to the wild, and home to more than 10% of the earth’s flora and fauna. To further enrich our precious Amazon, the world’s largest and most prestigious non-profit scientific organisation, the Good Comet Society, has gathered you into the lush jungles of the Amazon rainforest. Be prepared to run your very own conservation organisation to make the jungles of the Amazon flourish. Restore the rainforest, plant trees, and aquatic flowers to help the environment thrive. Depending on your choices, your jungle can be a symbiosis where various animals can live in harmony or it may become a nest for specific species to thrive. Succeed in cultivating the most prosperous jungle and be rewarded the Good Comet Association’s Grand Prize. Now…let’s get to work.
Get into…Life of the Amazonia gameplay
The goal of Life of the Amazonia is to be the player with the highest Environmental score at the end of the game.
You will do this in a variety of ways.
Essentially, it’s a resource management game which involves building a bag of resources which you then draw from to give you your different actions that you can take.
On your turn, you can take as many actions as are legally available to you. This will be based on the resources you have available to you.
These are as follows:
Purchase resource tokens – your currency can be used to buy fruit, water or leaves (these will be needed to purchase animals and nature cards as well as allow you to place out habitats, trees and flowers). You can also upgrade your currency to larger denominations thus helping you to buy increasingly better resources.
Area restoration – this action allows you to place out habitat tiles in order to accommodate more flora and fauna
Place animal – you purchase animals (or lure them) to your area and then you will gain the corresponding meeple to place out into your rainforest
Place Tree or Place aquatic flower – on the waterfall track, you can pay resources to gain trees and aquatic flowers thus allowing you to score more environmental points for combo-ing animals and plants together
Obtain a nature card – essentially bonus cards themed around nature in the rainforest and allow you to score extra points for flora and fauna in your rainforest
Use a plant card – these are a type of nature card that can be saved for a one time use and played at an opportune time
Expand your storage – doing this allows you to keep some of your resources from turn to turn rather than having to discard in the clean up phase
Purchase a bonus – allowing you to mitigate resources you don’t want by putting them in the trash, or allowing you to relocate an animal etc
Through completing these actions and then cleaning up at the end of your turn, you will begin to build your own rainforest teeming with life.
3 words to describe this game: beautiful animal meeples
Get into…Life of the Amazonia components
Wooden animal maples: 5 Jaguars, 5 Otters, 6 Macaws, 6 Caimans, 12 Woodpeckers, 12 Tree Frogs, 12 Tamarins, 8 Toucans
These are super cute and beautiful. I love the range of meeples here and just like Wild Serengeti, they are probably the drawing factor into the game.
Individual player animal meeples: 1 Anteater, 1 Dolphin, 1 Anaconda, 1 Hoatzin, 1 Sloth, 1 Turtle, 1 Iguana, 1 Armadillo
Again such variety in the animal meeples here.
16 player markers – these are used to keep track on the various tracks on the waterfall of life
4 Resource bags – bags to store resources you collect, you then draw these blind when you are starting your turn
4 Starting Terrain Tiles – terrain tiles similar to those seen in Cascadia and games like that. Different colours represent the different terrains which support different life forms.
36 Terrain Tiles – as above just more of them. Each terrain tile has several different symbols on it which offer bonuses when covered
21 Special Terrain tiles – acquired through bonuses
49 Trees – you have to put these together before playing your first game. Add to the aesthetics to the game but prepared for setting up before hand
50 Aquatic Flowers – cardboard chits representing flowers to place in the water areas of your rainforest
22 Worker Tokens – these become one time use wild resources and you can only have a max of four at any one time
5 Complete Tokens
Leaf Tokens, Currency Tokens, Water Tokens, Fruit Tokens – resources that you collect in order to be able to take actions
1 Waterfall of life – a cardboard assembled waterfall that has three tracks on it. A bit like the Everdell tree – it adds to the aesthetics of the game.
2 Token Vaults – genius idea for organising your tokens and they have lids so they won’t end up all over the place in the box
4 Discard Pile Boats – you assemble these boats and they then become essentially the place where you put your resource tokens after you’ve used them
16 Base Animal Cards – tell you the cost and scoring conditions for each animal
8 Unique Animal cards – see above but a personal action that you can take
2 Automa Cards – for solo mode
69 Nature Cards – to provide bonuses or give extra actions
4 Player Aids – super helpful
1 Scorepad – needed to work out who wins
1 Rulebook – if you’ve read any of my reviews before you’ll know that rulebooks sometimes drive me mad. This one is over complicated and essentially if you set up the game, its pretty obvious what you can and can’t do due to the resources you have. The rulebook just makes it seem much more complicated than it actually is. Once you have played it once, the rulebook makes sense but initially seems overwhelming
Get into…Life of Amazonia overall thoughts
Complicated rulebook aside, this game is so beautiful and the components have been well thought about. You can never have enough animal meeples – ok maybe that is just me!
Some of the components aren’t necessary but I can absolutely see why they have been included. You don’t need a boat to put your resources in but…is it cute? Yes! Does it look fab set up? Yes! Does it add to the story telling? Yes!
The waterfall needs to be taken apart to place it back in the box and initial set up is a little long seen as you have to make 49 mini trees but it looks awesome when you have started adding trees, flowers and animals to your rainforest. There is a puzzle element to the game and this is enjoyable. One thing I would say is that there is an element of luck in the bag building. Of course, you have to try to build your bag so its as lucrative each turn as it can be but there is always the possibility you could draw a duff selection and this can feel annoying. The workers and other bonuses can mitigate this a little bit and so it never spoiled the game but it was just something that came to mind when I was reviewing it.
This game has a lot going for it and offers a good amount fo variety to keep you replaying it. The different unique animals and the way you can choose different routes and actions each time you play just means that you could play again and again and the game feel different each time.
Its a game that grows on you. You need to stick with it and persevere with the rulebook but behind it is a solid game with great aesthetics and will have your game group swooning over the little animal meeples. If you are my wife, you will only be interested in the toucan meeples but there’s something for everyone.
