Adulthood Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Adulthood, a worker placement game published by Brotherwise Games. In Adulthood, you are trying to live your best life over the course of the game.

If you’ve been a Board Gamer™ for any length of time you’ve undoubtedly had the awkward conversation where you tell someone about your love for board games and they say something to the effect of, “Like The Game of Life? I love that game!”

And, let’s be honest, Life is pretty great. A little car with pegs for children to put in the backseat and you move your way through college, build a mansion, and eventually retire? Unlike the silly roll-and-moves games of the time, Life had a spinner. Spin and move is way better.

But now, Adulthood is here to help you pivot those folks into an honest-to-goodness hobby game. Despite a tragic lack of spinners, you might find this much closer to modern board game design while still really nailing the theme of, well, being an adult.

In Adulthood, much like actual adulthood, you’ll have to divvy up your time between going to work, helping around your community, and hopefully enjoying yourself every now and then. You have 8 “time” workers that you can allocate each round. There are two tracks, one tracking your happiness and the other your impact. These trackers start on opposite sides of the board and you trigger the game end when those two trackers meet, allowing you to have success focusing on either metric.

Unlike traditional worker placement games, there are no shared spaces between players. Instead, your time is only spent on your own player board. At the beginning of the game, you have some default work and leisure actions but they don’t produce as much money or happiness as you’d probably like. There is an interview action that will allow you to draw new career cards to potentially upgrade your action in the future. You can also go on a date and potentially find a partner that provides additional happiness.

Also, at the end of every turn you can acquire an adulthood card