Pros: LIFEpod, endless choices, lots of twists and turns (like real life)
Cons: Doesn't require any math skills, expensive if you can't find it on sale
The Bottom Line: The Game of Life: Twists and Turns is a fun, engaging upgrade of a classic board game that illustrates the unpredictable path of life.
Dr_Steph's Full Review: Game of Life Twists and Turns
An Off-Topic Introduction For My Old Friends (Feel Free to Skip the Italics)
I was just browsing the site tonight, readin' and ratin', and then clicked on my user page to remind myself how young I once looked. Sigh.... And there it was, the date of my joining Epinions: 1/24/00. Huh? That was nine years ago - to the day! I get dizzy just thinking back to what my life was like when I joined Epinions. I was young (relatively, OK) and married with an infant, toddler, and preschooler running me ragged. Now, nine years later, I'm old(er) and divorced with a grouchy teen, a blossoming tween, and an exasperating and loving nine-year-old, still running me ragged. It just blows my mind how things have changed and not changed. The shock of it all even inspired me to finally finish this review that I started writing last April. Hi to all my old friends and welcome to my new ones! Here goes..."
Once my top reviewer status for Kids & Family finally disappeared, I decided that I was done writing reviews for Epinions. No reason now, right? After all, there just aren't that many products that call to me to review them like they did in the past when I was fully entwined in the important world of car seats and strollers. However, every once and awhile I run across a toy that turns my head and keeps turning it and I want to tell others about it. Very appropriately, the toy that keeps turning my head is The Game of Life: Twists and Turns.
A Little "Life" History Here
I grew up loving board games: Monopoly, Clue, Sorry, etc. My favorite game was always Life, though. I don't know why but I always loved the progression of developmental steps from young adulthood to retirement and all the unpredictable ups and downs that could happen during that period. If anyone had bothered to pay attention to my Life fixation they may have predicted that I would become a developmental psychologist. Might have saved me some time-consuming drifting in college. Anyway, I found my passion on my own. And now I've found the game that continues to intrigue me, but in a new way.
The Game of Life - But Newer
My children have inherited my passion for board games so I know these are always a safe bet for gift-giving occasions. Unfortunately, a scan of the toy shelves before Christmas in 2007 told me that we either had all of the cool games or the rest were mostly for adults. I was not quite ready to go there, not with my then 8, 10, and 12 year old. Then I found The Game of Life: Twists and Turns on sale at Amazon. We already had two Life games (original and Sponge Bob) but the modernized theme intrigued me so I snapped it up. Turns out it was a big hit, with both the kids and me.
What's the Same and What has Changed?
The basic premise of selecting a career and progressing through adulthood has stayed the same from the original game to the new Twists and Turns version. You still get a career and a car (sort of) and can buy a house, get married, have kids, etc. However, the linear progression from start to finish is gone. Instead, the board is divided into four curvy quadrants (Learn It!, Earn It!, Love It!, and Live It!) with starting paths beginning in the center of the board and eventually returning to the center. Players can start on any quadrant they wish, switch quadrants, whenever they want, and recycle through quadrants, if desired. The very basic and obvious message here is that there is no one way to go through life. Hey, I like that!
Another difference is the way the money is managed. There's NO paper money in this Life game - not a single greenback. Instead, there is an electronic "LIFEpod" that keeps track of all your money, salary, Life points, cars, houses, marriage, children, etc. Big brother has arrived. What surprises me is how much I have ended up loving the convenience of the LIFEpod. You just slide your card in and make the transaction, whatever it may be, and the LIFEpod keeps track of it for you. It even "spins" for you to tell you how many spaces to move. If you screw up in entering your information, it beeps at you and that prompts you do "undo" and do it again right. The only two drawbacks to the LIFEpod that I can see are that it requires batteries and it doesn't require math skills. Well, the batteries we put in over a year ago are still going strong and the math, well, I guess the kids get that in school. Let's hope...
Each player gets a choice of several careers at the beginning of the game. Examples of careers include journalism, small business, sports, computer/internet, acting, criminal justice, music, military, education, retail/fashion, science/exploration, etc. Alas, no careers in psychology. The closest to my life would be "health" but that goes the medical doctor route or "education" which eventually tops out at "college professor." Each career card has a sequence of seven career steps, each of which starts at a measly $5000/year salary. Each salary bump includes a raise and, at the highest level, one might make as much as $2,000,000 down to $1,000,000. Often these final levels require "chance" rolling of the dice (i.e. LIFEpod). Gaining increases in career steps requires a promotion, which are easiest to attain through "Earn It" but can also be received through the graduate school loop of "Learn It" or the luck of the Life Cards.
Speaking of Life Cards, this is one of the biggest differences between the original Life game and Life: Twists and Turns. In the original Life game you might collect a handful of Life cards that include a short phrase and a monetary amount. These get set aside and basically ignored until the end of the game when they are totaled up. In the Life: Twists and Turns, players get a Life Card almost every turn, depending on where they land. Each Life Card has an innovative and clever "life event" for each of the four quadrants and the player reads the event associated with their current quadrant. In addition to an event like "You march in a nationally televised holiday parade. 200 LIFE" or "You get called in for a job interview...Now you have to dress for success. -$500 1 Promotion", you can get a Life Card that makes you start your career over or some other miniscule or huge, life-changing event (no death or divorce, though). The Life Cards in the current game are truly the "life" of the game. Once they are drawn and applied, they go back into the bottom of the pile. However, the pile of Life Cards is so big that you are unlikely to cycle back through in a single game.
Another difference between the versions of Life is that the recent edition requires you to decide on a "number of years" for the game, which translates directly into number of turns and largely determines the length of the game. If you are busy and just trying to placate bored kids, you can pick a length of 15 years, which is long enough to have fun but short enough to let you do something else with your day. However, if it's a cold, blustery winter day and you don't have any plans, you can splurge and go for a 40-year (40 turn) game, which can be tremendously rewarding or tedious, depending on your patience level. You can chose any length you want. Games of 10 years generally take about 40 minutes, whereas 30-year games are about two hours. Choices are entered into the LIFEpod at the beginning of the game but can be changed mid-game if you want it to go longer or end sooner.
What Are You Going to Do With Your Life?
The four quadrants are "Learn It!" (college, with an option of graduate school), "Earn It!" (as it sounds, this is where the big bucks are), "Love It!" (love and marriage and baby carriage), and "Live It!" (adventure, travel, and thrills). As I mentioned earlier, a player can choose to go through any of these quadrants in whatever order they want for as many times as they want (until the run out of lives, that is). As a psychologist, I can't help but see this as a projection of one's values and personality. For example, I ALWAYS go through the "Learn It" loop fairly early in the game, usually including the extra mini loop for graduate school. Why? Well, it gives you some needed bumps ahead in your career (usually) and, ummm, because...well it's the way I was raised, OK? My conspicuous-consumer daughter always goes through "Earn It" at least two times to get the moolah to support her lifestyle and then she moves to "Love It" for the romance and those babies (not to mention a bucket load of Life points). My oldest son, the straight A student, usually hits "Learn It" pretty early in the game, too, and then heads to "Earn It" and eventually "Live It." My youngest hell-raiser usually makes a cursory path through "Earn It" to make a little dough and then cycles around and around through "Live It" where the living is expensive but the opportunities for Life points are fantastic. After getting my degree, I usually cycle through "Earn It" a few times for promotions and then maybe cycle through "Love It" in a tentative sort of way. I just wish this game would let you get the babies without having to go through the marriage. Oh, never mind, I didn't say that... I generally shy away from "Live It!" because the costs and risks seem so high. There you have it, that's my psychological profile for you.
How Does it All Add Up?
Unlike the original game, the main focus of this game is Life points. The player with the most Life points wins. How do you get the most Life points? Well, there a quite a few to be had in the "Love It" arena and lots and lots in the "Live It" arena. Individual Life cards for each quadrant can also increase or decrease your Life points. Having children increases your Life points but decreases your money (ain't it the truth!). The money you earn does translate into Life points at the end, as do the cars, houses, children, etc. (thanks to the amazing LIFEpod). It's really rather tricky to predict whether the rich miser with the fewer Life points will beat the poor, adventurer with lots of Life points.
Dr_Steph's Experience With The Game of Life: Twists and Turns
As I mentioned earlier, this is one of my favorite games to play with my kids. We've owned it for more than a year and it still is the most chosen game (second only to "Apples to Apples"). It keeps my interest for at least an hour and lends itself to interesting conversations with the kids like "You're really going to try sky-diving???" or "Why are you doing the education path so soon, Mom? It just makes you poor!" There are all kinds of other little details to the games like "Lottery" (the kids love it), "Business Ventures" (we usually ignore it), buying cars and buying houses. We've dabbled in car and house purchases but they don't maintain our interest for long so mostly we stay with the skateboard that everyone starts with and don't bother with the real estate.
As with most games, this one is a combination of savvy strategy and luck. A few times my kids have been just zooming along through the game, earning a massive salary of $2,000,000 per turn and then they pull a Life card that says "Change of heart! Choose another Career card and start back at level 1, 5,000 LIFE." Sometimes (especially with my daughter) this leads to tears and a decision to watch TV instead of finishing the game. As she walks away I usually say something like, "Well, honey, that's life. These things happen." I don't mean to sound like a cheesy advertisement for the game but, face it, "that's life."
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 20 Type of Toy: Game
Age Range of Child: 9 Years or Older
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