Salton Sea Review

boardgamequest.com:

To look at the gorgeous and near-serene pastel cover is to enter a space of relaxation. You feel a gentle breeze as you peer into the bright blue sky with swatches of white clouds. The sun glimmers off—what is that—a power plant of some sort? And the ground is shaking. What is that horrible sound? Is that a drill breaking through the dried-out landscape?

The light fades as the sun slinks away from the inevitable attempts at progress by Earth’s most infamous species. Enter Salton Sea, published by Devir and designed by David Bernal, a game about discovery, change, and as one would guess, profits.

Players take on the role of a company attempting to build industry to extract brine and turn it into both geothermal and lithium energy sources. To do this, they begin with four workers and a wide range of actions available to them. They also start with a hand of seven multi-use cards that can be used as either currency or improved actions. Actions are quick during play, but there is also plenty of analysis required to remain efficient.

A round consists of players using all available workers. Each turn presents a scope of available actions that either increase the production engine (industrial) or increase profits (commercial). Other actions available to players are called management actions and provide ways to invest internally. Action spaces are on each player’s individual board and each space can only be activated once per round.

Salton Sea revolves around efficiently taking actions. Before we drill into some of those actions, it’s important to highlight the card system. All players begin with the same hand seven different improved-action cards. Each card is also worth one dollar. Money is used for a variety of purchases and each payment removes potential improved actions from your hand. Thankfully there are ways to add currency back into your hand (via a card market), and it is this interconnectivity that provides the game’s tension.

The Industrial Actions focus on