Machi Koro Life

• Designer: Masao Suganuma
• Publisher: Pandasaurus
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Machi Koro: Life, instead of building up cities, players will use engine-building cards to collect “hearts”, which represent different aspects of life such as hobbies or jobs, in an effort to ultimately exchange these hearts for “dream” points depicted on another kind of cards on display. The core mechanisms of rolling one or two dice and activating blue/red/purple cards remain essentially the same, and one can either buy another engine-building card or a card with “dream” points after rolling the dice and obtaining the corresponding amount of hearts. The first player to obtain 8 dream points will have attained their ideal life and wins the game.

To set up – shuffle each of the four decks of cards and place them on the table. Flip up cards from each deck until you have 5 unique cards in each row.  If you flip up duplicate cards, simply stack them on top of each other.  Each player gets 5 hearts to start the game and there are 3 rounds of buying cards to seed each player’s starting Portfolio (i.e. cards in their area).  You are not obligated to buy 3 cards as you could go broke with just a single card.  If you have unspent hearts after three rounds, you keep those Hearts which can be used later.  You can buy either Life cards or Dream cards. It is recommended that you organize your Portfolio by activation number on the cards so that you can more easily find them.

On a turn, the active player decides if they will roll one or two dice and then rolls them.  The sum of the dice rolled is the Activation number for this turn.  There are four different colors of cards, and that color determines when they activate:

• Red – Jobs – activate only on opponent’s turns when its number is rolled
• Blue – Outdoor – activate on any turn when its number is rolled
• Green – Indoor – activate only on your turn when its number is rolled
• Purple – Interactive – activate only on your turn when its number is rolled

If it matters, the cards activate in the order shown above (i.e. Red first).  Thus, if it is your turn, you must first pay out your opponent’s Red card actions before you would earn money from your other cards.   If you have to pay multiple players, this is done in counter clockwise order.

After all the cards are activated, the active player can now buy a card from the market, paying the cost in hearts as shown on the card they buy.  You are not obligated to buy a card. If you have no hearts, you simply gain a heart in compensation.  After buying, if any row has fewer than 5 cards in it, flip up new cards until there are 5 unique types in each row.

Continue playing until someone is able to score 8 VIP points on their Dream Cards in their Portfolio. That player wins. 

My thoughts on the game

Well when I first read about this, I was worried that it was just a re-skin of Machi Koro – and I’m happy to say that while it has many similar features, the game itself is different.  The game now has two different types of cards – the Life cards which are more traditional engine building cards as well as the Dream Cards which are more for the VPs – though the Dream cards still have their own abilities, just not activated by dice rolls. 

There is a nice interplay between the two types of cards, and many of the Dream card effects are dependent on you having the right Life card in your Portfolio already.  This also can affect who might be interested in a card as the Dream cards can be quite expensive. Players may not want to spend 8 or even 16 Hearts on a card that doesn’t also give them a special ability.  That being said, I have seen a couple of times where players have bought a Dream card to prevent another player from gaining it and developing a very good combo.  Some cards actually restrict purchase unless you have the corresponding combo cards while others do not.

The game also starts with a new three-round buying spree which gets people off with at least a little bit of an engine. The rules are not super clear whether you refresh the market after each buy, but we decided that you must do this or else there wouldn’t be enough viable cards in the market after three full rounds.  In one way, this alleviates one of the complaints I always had of Machi Koro – that is that the game starts out too slow as it takes multiple turns of waiting for your number to come up before you can buy enough cards to really do something.

Now, you start with 3 cards and you at least have a few numbers to look for.  Of course, in order to do this, you’ll have to focus on the cards that hit on everyone’s turn.  Otherwise, you’ll still just be hoping to roll your own number(s) on your turn.  That part of Machi Koro is still ever present, namely, you’ll do best if the table rolls your number a lot.  That’s really the key strategy to the game, and unfortunately, you can’t control that too much.  Sure, you can play the odds as best you can, but if you have 5 cards that activate on an 8, and luck has it that 8s aren’t rolled – well, you’ll be grousing a lot watching your cards do nothing for you.

There is one other change that I find intriguing about the game – namely that players now have the choice to roll one or two dice on each turn.  This obviously changes the odds a bit, as a “2” card would hit 1 in 6 on a one die roll while only 1 in 36 on a two dice roll.  Depending on what you are hoping to get out of a turn (or perhaps trying to deny your opponents of), you can choose the type of roll that gives you the best chance of your desired outcome.

As with regular Machi Koro, the game has its ebbs and flows – mostly depending on how often your numbers come up.  I feel like there is a bit more opportunity to craft your own unique strategy in this game, especially with the way that the Dream cards interact with your Life cards.  It’s definitely different enough that both can exist in a game collection – Machi Koro Life definitely adds a few new tricks to the franchise.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral. John P
• Not for me…