- Publisher(s) : La Boîte de Jeu
- Designer(s) : Frédéric Guérard
- Artist(s) : Anthony Wolff
- Players : 1–5
- Playing time : 45 Min
- Weight BGG : 2.33
What's this?
It’s a Wonderful World is a development and drafting game in which each player embodies a rapidly expanding empire. The goal: optimize your production, build ambitious projects, and generate more victory points than your opponents in just 4 rounds .
How do you play?
A game takes place over 4 rounds , each divided into 3 major phases .
1. Draft Phase
Each player receives 7 Development cards .
The principle is simple:
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You choose 1 card from your hand.
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You pass the rest to your neighbor (left on turns 1 and 3, right on turns 2 and 4).
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Everyone reveals their card and places it in their draft zone .
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We repeat this process until we have 7 cards chosen.
Drafting allows you to both build your production engine and block potentially powerful cards for your opponents.
2. Planning Phase
For each of your 7 cards, you must choose:
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Put it into construction : it moves into your construction zone and you will need to complete it with resources.
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Recycling it : you discard it and immediately gain its recycling bonus (one resource), to be placed either:
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on a map under construction,
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either in your transformation zone.
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If recycling allows you to complete a construction, you immediately gain its bonus and add it to your empire.
3. Production Phase
Each tower comprises 5 successive production stages , always in this order:
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Materials
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Energy
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Science
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Gold
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Exploration
At each stage:
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You count the symbols produced by your already constructed cards.
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If you produce more than all other players, you win the supremacy bonus : a General or a Financier depending on the resource.
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You allocate your resources to advance your constructions.
Krystallium plays a key role:
As soon as you store 5 resources in the transformation area, you exchange them for 1 Krystallium , usable as a wildcard for any resource or for certain specific slots.
Completed cards join your empire and will begin producing in the next phase.
After Exploration production, the turn ends.
Is it good?
It’s a Wonderful World is an excellent engine-building game that really gets the brain working.
The successful combination of card drafting and engine building, where you optimize your resource production, is simply brilliant.
There’s a very satisfying sense of progression over the four rounds: you start with few resources and limited options, then see your strategy explode during the production phases, where resources generate other resources in a cascade. Each card chosen then becomes an essential cog in your overall plan.
The game is easy to learn, but offers real strategic depth and high replayability thanks to the wide variety of cards.
But it’s not all perfect. It’s a Wonderful World can feel a bit cold, with a somewhat superficial theme: the focus is more on colors and resource types than on the feeling of building an empire. The game is also very calculation-driven, and its production system might leave players who don’t necessarily enjoy anticipating and optimizing everything behind.
Despite this, It’s a Wonderful World remains a sure bet for card games and drafting, with a simple but terribly effective design that makes you want to play game after game.
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It's a Wonderful World Review
Positives
- Very satisfactory power increase
- brilliant cascade production combo
- Simple rules but great strategic depth
- efficient draft
- Very good replayability
Negatives
- The theme is rather cold and not very immersive.
- A very strategic game, which may put some players off.
- Less intuitive to use for those who don't like to plan ahead.
- Limited interaction
