Life Twists and Turnsis a reimagining of an old classic. While the familiar themes of driving aroundthe board, acquiring a career, getting married, and having children, are allpresent, the gameplay is vastly different.The game can be set to last anywhere from 1 to 50 turns requiring playersto adjust their strategies and balance their time on the board in order to earnthe most life points and win the game.
Rules Summary
Each player receives acredit card to be inserted into the lifepod each turn. The lifepod is anelectronic device that replaces the spinner from the original game and keepstrack of almost everything for all players including income, marital status,number of children, type of car and house owned, money in the bank and thenumber of life points earned. At the end of the game, the lifepod makes final calculationsand declares the winner.
When we are younger, we have plans for our future and we know exactly how we’d like it to go – what career we’ll pursue, when we’d like to have a family, where we may want to live yet unexpected twists and turns happen in life and we have to find the motivation and resilience to get through even the biggest challenges and carry on. In their place are credit cards and mysterious little things called “Life Points.” The basic idea of The Game of Life: Twists and Turns is pretty much the same as the.
The game board isdivided into four sections: live it, love it, learn it, and earn it.In these sections, players are able to completemany accomplishments which influence the amount of money earned every turn and,more importantly, the number of life points earned every turn.
Live It:Players fund adventures in order to earn lifepoints.
Love It:Players are able to get married and havechildren.Expanding the family provides alot of life points every turn for the rest of the game but the more childrenyou have, the less money you get to keep from your paycheck.
Learn It:Allows players to earn a degree and/or a PhDwhich unlocks higher paying jobs on your career track.
Earn It: Players are able to get promotions and advancetheir career tracks.
Lifepod:The components in this game are fun.Having an electronic device that keeps tracks of everything for you seems alittle sky-netish but it is what makes the game interesting. The downside isthat the calculations can get very complicated.For instance, all money acquired during the game is sold off to buy lifepoints at the end of the game but the formula to do this is random every game. Themanual briefly explains how the calculations are done throughout the game butthere are so many of them and they change so much during a game that it is hardto track. It is much easier to just let the lifepod figure it out and not thinkabout it too much. I have read on the internet that the calculations listed inthe manual do not exactly match up to the lifepod. I have not actually done themath to confirm this myself, but I don’t believe the calculation differencesactually impact the game very much since they are the same for all players.
PlayerBoards:Each player gets a player boardwhich is used to hold their career cards and to mark major milestones includingthe completion of a degree, marriage, etc. While these boards and clips are madewell, they don’t have to be used much since the lifepod tracks most of thesethings for you.
LifeCards:Many of the spaces on the boardare blank. On these spaces, the player draws a life card and reads the sentencecorresponding to the quarter of the board they are on. There are many of thesecards in the game and they add some variety and humor to the game. Most of thecards allow the players to gain or lose money or life points. A few allow youto mess with other players.
Final Thoughts
Positives
There are a lot of calculations going on behind the scenes so it can be hard to know how you are doing until the final calculations are complete
There are very few differences between career cards
Too many salary and life point modifiers make it hard for players (especially new players) to remember
This was a $5 thriftshop find. I had never even heard of this game before but I remembered playingthe original Life so I decided to give it a shot.We have played it a bunch of times alreadyand have enjoyed it.
by Amanda Nettgen
(USA) Paint monsters level 1019.
Game:
The Game of Life: Twists and Turns
Board game manufacturer:
Milton Bradley
Number of players:
2-4
Ages:
9+
Quick verdict
This is not your mother’s Game of Life. In The Game of Life: Twists & Turns, no longer is your only choice whether to go to college or not. You don’t follow the same predetermined roads game after game like you did in the original Life.
The game and gameplay
The Game of Life: Twists & Turns looks very different compared to its non-flashy predecessor.
The elements of choosing a career, Life tiles, and making bank to win are still there, but the game play is completely revamped from what you knew in regular Life.
First of all, in lieu or making your way all the way through the board from start to finish, you get to decide how long you will play.
You enter the number of “years” (turns!) your group wants to play in the game’s LIFEPod and the device keeps track of the turns automatically.
Want to get Game of Life: Path To Success for the PC FREE and LEGAL? Click here, open a FREE trial GameHouse FunTickets account and it’s yours today! Click for more info.Everyone starts with a strikingly unrealistic salary of $5,000 a year (or turn, if you still haven’t caught on to the gamespeak). On your turn, you may navigate your skateboard (yes, you read that right) along any of the four paths you please:
Love It!,
Live It!,
Earn It!, or
Learn It!You may even choose to refresh your course and warp to another category’s start space at the beginning of a turn. If you land on a blank space, a Life card is drawn (the equivalent to the former game’s tiles), and the instructions are followed.
Perhaps you’ll invent a board game that someone will write about on Boardgame Beast and score $900,000, or get into a ski accident and lose 300 Life Points.
What are Life Points? Life Points are the other aspect that matters in this game besides money. You get them from drawing cards, getting married, having kids, and so on.
