Base price: $30.
1 – 8 players.
Play time: ~45 minutes.
BGG | Board Game Atlas
Logged plays: 2
Full disclosure: A review copy of Your Best Life was provided by WizKids.
Back on the grind with the reviews, I think. Finally feeling up to getting back to a consistent writing schedule. We’re still figuring out the details, but it’s an ongoing process. I write, I get ahead, I get lazy, I fall behind, I write. It’s pretty consistent, thus far. I think the goal is somewhere along the lines of figuring out a good pace of balance, and ironically, you’d think I had that locked down pretty well after seven years of writing. Eight years? I think it’s almost eight years. Either way, in pursuit of my best life, writing up Your Best Life seems like a pretty good move. Let’s see what’s up?
In Your Best Life, the name’s the goal, you know? You only have one life to life, and you might as well live it to the utmost. That means balancing a few different things: your Health, Knowledge, Social life, Money, and Time. Naturally, you’ve got your own goals as well, so trying to balance them against your opportunities while managing stress is a pretty major task. Sometimes it’s a bit too much to handle on your own. And that’s okay! The nice thing about Your Best Life is that you don’t have to go through it alone. Take another player with you, couple up, and compete against other couples and singles to see who has achieved the life best lived in this combo-filled flip-and-write! How will your life measure up?
Contents
Setup
So, each player can play as a Single or two players can play together as a couple. Any combination works. Once you’ve got players, have couples sit side by side. Give each player a player board:
Give each Single a Single Family Sheet:
Give each Couple a Couple Family Sheet:
Each sheet has a corresponding character token (flower or bird); give each player their matching one. Then, shuffle the various decks. There are Action Cards:
Background Cards:
Personal Goals:
Shared Goals:
Children (Single players):
Children (Couples):
Stories:
Vacations:
Invitations are used in the Story Variant; if not using them, set them aside:
Have every Couple / Single mark three Xs on the Stress Track on the bottom of their Family Sheet. Then, each Couple and Single draws two Shared Goals from the deck, choosing two to keep. Each individual player draws two Personal Goals, choosing one to keep. Each player also gets a Background card, checking off the indicated square. Then, players write their family name, the city they live in, their character’s name, their hobby, and their profession. It’s mostly flavor text. You can introduce your player to other players, if they want.
Set the Stress Dice nearby:
Finally, each player starts with 0 Happiness and 0 Balance; mark them on the indicated lines on your player sheet. Draw four cards from the Action Deck, reveal them, and you should be ready to start!
Gameplay
Over ten rounds, Couples and Singles will flip, write, and try to build their best lives!
To start each round, refresh the Action Card display by drawing four cards and discarding the previous four. Naturally, in the first round, you just got four cards, so you won’t need to do that. Now, all players (in conference with their partners, if they’re part of a Couple) simultaneously pick an Action Card to place their token on. Each player chooses individually, even players in a Couple. If multiple players (from different Couples) or singles choose the same Action card, all players who chose that card gain a Like, marking one space on their Digital Persona track.
Some Action Cards have a Stress icon on the bottom-left of the card. For each one, players roll the number of Stress Dice indicated on the card, gaining the indicated Stress. Others have Relaxation on them; if you gain a Relaxation, erase the indicated Stress. If you cross from one color track to the other, gain or lose the indicated amount of Happiness. If you hit the end of the Stress Track, you will either gain or lose the indicated amount of Joy.
After doing that, players use the Action Icons on their selected Action Card. The four-leaf clover icon denotes a wild action; so you can fill in whatever. Some actions, upon crossing them off, may let you gain additional actions (sometimes even two, if you complete a purple action and you’re a Single; purple actions give each part of a Couple one action).
Different actions give different results. Some actions will let you have Children, for instance, which have their own tracks that must be completed. Others will let you take a Vacation, but you have to spend two Money actions (or spend one Money action with another player). Others let you spend additional actions to gain Opportunities, which will let you earn points.
At the end of each round, you collect (or lose) points for your current Happiness and your current Joy. Your Joy resets to 0, but your Happiness stays the same. You can also make progress on your Personal and Shared Goals, as well as earning Balance, which can help bolster your score later. After rounds 4 / 7 / 10, you score your Personal Goals again.
At the end of the game, you earn points from your Character Sheet, your Family Sheet, your total Happiness and Joy, and your Balance Score, and you lose points for any incomplete Children cards and Shared Goals cards. Singles multiply their scores by 2, and Couples add their scores together. The players with the most points win!
Player Count Differences
Generally speaking, there aren’t that many differences, though with more players you’re pretty solidly likely to share some Likes for choosing the same Action Card more frequently, so scores will likely tend to skew a bit higher. Personally, I like that? It makes the game feel more collaborative, even if you’re not playing a fully-cooperative game. As noted elsewhere, players can play by themselves or in couples to try and maximize their scores from a few different angles, so that’s cool. You have different goals when you’re single than you do when you’re in a couple (just like real life!), so there’s a benefit to trying the game in each iteration, as well. You can also play singles against couples or a solo single or a solo couple, however you want. The sky’s the limit, as far as configurations go. That said, as I mentioned, I prefer more players for this one, just because the overlap of actions makes the game a bit more engaging and fun. You get to Like Stories from other players or hit the same Action Card or, occasionally, just go on a Vacation with a rival. I like that! At lower player counts, you’re mostly doing things yourself. We’re social creatures; lean into it, you know? But yeah, for me, Your Best Life is best at higher player counts. I enjoyed playing it solo, but had much more fun with more people.
Strategy
- Yeah, you super don’t want to give up on your Shared Goals; you can lose a ton of points that way. Your Shared Goals are more punitive than anything else. While that doesn’t necessarily feel great, it’s pretty important to stay focused on them for long-term success. That, and because losing a bunch of points at the end of the game sucks. On the positive side, they do tell you what to focus on, so you can try and align yourself even when you’re just getting started.
- Generally, looking for synergies between your Goals and your Background is good; that can inform your strategy pretty well. A few things let you choose your starting … skills? Trying to find goals that align with your skills is a pretty good policy in your regular life and your Best Life, so … do that. You can decouple them if you’re looking for a bit more of a challenge, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend tat.
- Going on Vacation isn’t too bad, but it’s ultimately a fairly random upgrade, so towards the end of the game you may want to stop. Early in the game, you can get a bunch of progress made on a few different tracks, which is pretty handy (especially if you just got money from an Action Card and don’t know what to do with it). Towards the end of the game, you’ll likely have some tracks completely filled out, so getting a random upgrade might be nothing entirely (or something that isn’t very useful). That said, if your goal is to go on as many Vacations as possible, go with God, I guess.
- Balance is good, provided you take the steps necessary to make sure you earn the points that will multiply it. If you end up with a 0 in any major category, you end up with a 0 on your Balance score. That’s just how the math shakes out. If you’re going to go the route of investing in Balance, then you need to make sure that you follow through. Ideally, to the tune of getting more than 2 or 4 points in every category, but also so that your Balance actually means something. It’s, as is the case with much of this game, a process.
- Yes, Liking a Story helps other players, but frankly, it doesn’t always help them that much and earning player goodwill can make it more likely that they will Like your Story, which benefits you! Generally speaking, being nice to other players is a good idea in most games that aren’t take-that heavy, but here, specifically, being nice to other players may have a specific benefit that comes back around on you. It’s a general booster, liking someone else’s Story. You get the benefit, and they get a Like, which may ultimately get them some points down the line. Just keep in mind that only one player from a Couple can get the bonus from a Story.
- Just like real-life, think carefully about having kids; they’re a pretty big investment of resources and you might be better served for your own goals by spending that time elsewhere. If you’re related to me, please don’t read into this. In the context of the game Your Best Life, specifically, having children may just end up being a burden for you. They basically add a small track that you need to fill out to get points, and you lose points for neglecting your children in lieu of fulfilling your own goals. To be fair, you chose to have them, I suppose.
- You can lose a bunch of points if you’re not managing your Stress, but it might be worth it, in some circumstances. There are a few Action Cards that are no-brainers when it comes to picking them, and consequently, they’re the ones that can add the most Stress to your board if you roll the dice poorly. Sometimes it’s not worth the risk, but sometimes it absolutely is. Naturally, try keeping your Stress down with Relaxation so that you can take advantage of the valuable cards, but sometimes you might just need to take some negative points so that you can gain some positive points.
- As with many roll-and-write games, shoot for that big combo! The big combo is pretty much the Holy Grail of whatever-and-write games, and Your Best Life can make it possible. Certain boxes, when filled out, grant you either Opportunity points (in exchange for spending an action), or they grant you other actions that you can spend on the board. Lining up a few actions that grant you actions that grant you actions can be the lever by which you earn a bunch of points at once.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- It’s a very cute theme! I think it’s very pleasant to have a game all about cobbling together your skills and trying to make the best possible life for yourself, and while the flip-and-write abstracts a lot of the process of doing so out, it’s still a pleasant theme for the game! It comes through a bit in some of the Stories and Vacations part of the game, but it’s still fairly abstract overall.
- Even then, I think the theme does a nice job making sure the “flip and reveal boxes and check off boxes” part stays interesting. It’s sort of the middle ground between something like Cartographers, where the theme is essential to the game, and a Yahtzee / Ganz Schon Clever where you’re just checking off abstract boxes in an abstract fashion. They both have their pros and cons, but something a bit lightly-themed can still be a nice way to make the game feel like more than checking boxes.
- The nice combo potential of the game is pretty fun, as well. I’m a big fan of high-combo something-and-write games, and so it’s always nice to have a new game that lets me try to thread the needle of getting a bunch of boxes crossed off in one turn. It’s a great feeling.
- I really like that teams and single players can play against each other without major changes required. That’s just a really interesting thing for a game to do! Plus, I’ve found there are plenty of times when two people want to play a game together rather than focusing on the game individually, so this probably ends up right up their alley. It’s kind of cool that you don’t have to modify the game so that players can play somewhat together, as a couple. Plus, they can play against individual players, since single players just double their score at the end of the game.
- The Invitation and Story Variants are both cute ways to add a bit more immersion to the game, if you’re into that. I don’t think they’re critical, but writing a cute invitation to your new in-game child’s birthday or something is a bit of silly fun for the more immersive players. Having players tell stories about what they did on Vacation or what Story they’re posting for other players to like is also a bit of silly fun, if your group is into that. If they’re not, well, you don’t have to play with those at all.
- If you’re a fairly cooperative group, you can essentially play collaboratively but still competitively (by taking Vacation actions together and Liking each others’ Stories). There’s a nice sense of community as you play, just because everyone’s actions can only really benefit other players. There’s no particular drawbacks to taking other players on Vacation or Liking their Stories, it just benefits them when you do so (and you, as well). It becomes like trading in other games. You want to be the person at the center of all of these transactions so that you can get the maximum benefit. At the end of the game, that can count for a lot. Look at that, there’s a strategic benefit to not being a jerk. Just like real life!
- I like the benefit of multiple players choosing the same action card. It’s nice that you’re not penalized for that, but, rather, it helps all players. It means that you need to flip the calculus and try to choose actions which help you but also have a high degree of likelihood to be picked by other players. It’s kind of fun.
Mehs
- Given how many Wild actions are given out by various effects, I’m kind of surprised there’s no place on your board to keep track of them. It just struck us as strange. A lot of different things give you extra wild actions, but then you need to try and either keep track of them on the already-busy boards or just draw circles in an empty spot on the board and check them off. We ended up choosing the latter option, just for simplicity.
- I don’t love the interrupt-esque action of asking another player to go on Vacation. It comes at an odd time in the action resolution step. You can get kind of clowned if you usually make your money from action combos; by the time you resolve enough things to figure out if you’re getting money, the other players may have paired up on Vacations and left you high and dry. It would be nice if there were a separate step for resolving this kind of thing, but that wouldn’t necessarily work (since you can gain benefits from Vacations that can gain you other benefits, and so on). It’s a bit of a cat-and-mouse loop.
- There’s a bit of strange overloading where something means one thing in one place and another thing in an only-slightly-different place. One place where this can happen is the Romance Track; in a Couple, both players need to complete the track before either of them get the benefits. There’s a small icon to that effect on the board, but it’s fairly easy to miss. It can be a bit confusing.
- Similarly, several players were thrown off by Relaxation being with the other “actions”, rather than where Stress is on the Action Cards, which felt more relevant (since they’re opposite sides of the same effect). This is a pretty minor thing, but it feels like Stress and Relaxation should be in the same spot on the cards, since they’re essentially polar opposites. It seems like the motivation for keeping them separate is that you earn Relaxation but Stress forces you to roll the dice and take it that way? Not sure.
- The variability of the Stress Dice probably amortizes out over the course of the game, but getting a bad roll feels terrible. Getting bad rolls sucks! But it’s particularly a pain when getting a bad roll loses you a ton of points since you’re at the end of the Stress Track. That said, you’re well-informed of the risks before you roll the dice, so, it happens.
- I feel like we could have gone for anyone on the Entrepreneur card that wasn’t the guy who busted the window of his truck after saying it was unbreakable. Maybe it’s satire; who knows.
Cons
- The boards are pretty intensely busy! There’s almost so much there that it’s easy to forget what goes where and when. The rulebook is, too, to be fair; small font and a lot to say. I think the same graphic design principles made it to the boards, unfortunately. I think both could benefit from a bit of room to breathe. It would make things a bit easier to read and process. For new players, the boards can look a bit intimidating, given the size and scope of everything.
- I know this is going to be one of those “no great way to solve this problem” things, but we got super confused by the points for a row being cumulative rather than not. This is why you come here, for the hard-hitting “this is definitely just a problem that Eric has” comments, but here we are. I thought the numbers weren’t cumulative in our first game. It changes how we probably would have strategized, but, oh well.
Overall: 7.25 / 10
Overall, I think Your Best Life is a lot of fun! I appreciate a flip-and-write game with a bit of heft to it, having recently played and enjoyed Motor City, as well. This one’s a bit intense, just in that the presentation of the game board, while cute, is pretty busy. It’s easy to get lost between the two boards you have to keep track of, and I wouldn’t exactly call every graphic design choice made intuitive. For one, the points in a row are cumulative, so you use the rightmost number you’ve earned (which can sometimes be a bit confusing). I think that’s the kind of thing that different people have different preferences on, but it definitely threw us off in our first game. The other major thing I didn’t love was just how asking players to take a Vacation with you worked. It’s really just the first person you can get to agree with you goes, which ends up making the whole interaction a bit real-time in a strange way. Just odd. That said, we ended up asking other players to go on Vacation with us a lot; for a competitive game, if your friends have a more cooperative vibe, you can get along quite nicely. You can take Vacations together, you can Like each others’ Stories, the whole thing. Actions you take to benefit other players benefit you, and there’s no converse. You can’t hurt anyone or act against them over the course of the game. No take-that, here. As a result, you end up with a slightly cognitively heavy game that’s still got a very pleasant theme and a nice degree of player interaction. Choosing the same actions as another player benefits you both! Things like that. If you’re more combo-focused, there are pretty good opportunities to string lots of combos together, as well! You can even play solo, play as a solo pair, or mix up playing singles and couples against each other! Lots of variety, here. I’ll be interested to see if there’s any extensions to this one in the future. In the meantime, however, if you’re looking for an entertaining flip-and-write, you want one that you can play with pairs of players, or you just want to pull off more combos again, Your Best Life might be worth checking out! I had fun with it.
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