CO2: Second Chance Review – Save the Planet, or Die Trying (Most Likely the Latter)

CO₂: Second Chance tackles one of the toughest battles we face today: climate change. Which is a huge, massive, impossible challenge. So to capture it accurately we need a huge, massive, and impossible board game.

Introducing CO₂: Second Chance.

Vital Lacerda has a design formula and each game he creates rotates around it. In Escape Plan, he modified the formula trying to make it fast-paced and action-packed. In CO₂: Second Chance it’s the same formula modified for cooperative play.

Therefore, if you’ve played one of Vital’s games before, you’ll know what to expect. For everyone else though, each turn is broken into a main action, and executive (or what I like to call side) actions.

You can only do one main action per turn, such as propose a project, prepare infrastructure, or build a power plant. However, you can do as many executive actions as you want, but only once. These executive actions include: moving a scientist, visiting the carbon emission permit (CEP) market, playing a lobbyist card or claiming a U.N. goal.

It doesn’t sound too complicated written down, but what you need to understand is that each action and each executive action control their separate system within the game. For example, the CEP market increases and decreases the price based on demand. Or proposing a project changes rewards based on the continent and the type of project you propose.

Figuring out how all these systems mesh together and how to manipulate them is a sophisticated puzzle that’s deep and satisfying to solve. The game also rewards you frequently for doing well. Be it giving you more victory points, reducing CO₂ parts per million (ppm), research upgrades, or completing environmental, private or United Nations goals.

The Intricacies of International Cooperation

It’s not often I come away from a board game feeling let down, but that’s exactly how I felt after playing CO₂: Second Chance. It looks amazing, the theme is something I’m passionate about, and the puzzle just clicks for me.

But the cooperative aspect of the game feels underdone. Like it’s held together by victory points and electrical tape. That’s no joke either. As victory points you gain, are used to lower the CO₂ ppm track. A mechanic you use frequently because if this track gets too high, you lose.

CO₂: Second Chance gets so much right regarding its theme – from the tidbits about Global Warming throughout the rule book, to the intricacies of international cooperation in the gameplay. The introduction of victory points as a mechanism is so out of place it’s jarring.

Also, it complicates the game further than it needs to. Figuring out if you’ve won or lost only comes after a series of calculations at the end of the round. There’s no instant feedback, and therefore it feels unsatisfying when you eventually learn the outcome.

However, that’s not all that happens at the end of each round. As you draw tokens from a bag representing the amount of CO₂ ppm added to the atmosphere. These can range from 20 to 40 ppm. So a bad draw can see double the amount of ppm in the atmosphere. Making it feel impossible to play against.

Normally, I’m not against a bit of luck or chaos. However, CO₂: Second Chance takes hours to play, and is otherwise beautifully designed. This random draw ruins the rest of the game because it feels like a coin flip, on an almost flawless production.

Beautiful but Flawed

While each action has its own rules and learning them all takes time. Thankfully, CO₂: Second Chance is cohesively put together.

There are a lot of intricacies in the rules and within each system. But every system intuitively connects to the next one. So everything makes contextual sense and the rules melt away into the background.

A big part of what makes it intuitive is the graphic design, and my hat is off to Ian O’Toole for this game. The bold bright colours are fantastic and make the game pops on your table. But the real cherry on top is the stark contrast of these bright colours against the pollution markers which are dull and black.

It’s truly an aesthetic masterpiece.

Unfortunately, as much as I love pretty much all of the aspects of the game, CO₂: Second Chance as a whole fell flat. Aside from the tacked-on cooperative mechanics, the puzzle itself was unrelentingly difficult. Probably due to the random draw of ppm tiles. But there’s no room for freedom of original thought. You must decide and act together with the other players if you’re going to stand a chance at winning. But even then, it feels like the path to victory feels narrow and constrained.

Otherwise, CO₂: Second Chance grim reminder of climate change, and how there’s no easy solution. And if my games are anything to go by.

We’re doomed.