Introduction
The Pursuit of Happiness, a game created by designers Adrian Abela and David Chircop and published by Artipia Games in 2015, was pitched to me as “The Game of Life” for gamers. This brought back some nostalgic memories for me, as I have strangely fond recollections of that classic game. Those memories mainly stem from playing the computer version that came in a cereal box when I was a kid. I can vividly remember huddling around the computer with my sisters, engaging in hot seat mode, taking turns with the mouse, and poking fun at the randomly assigned professions we received, and the terrible 1998 3D computer graphics.
Well, you get what you pay for, I suppose!
How to Play
In The Pursuit of Happiness, players are attempting to live the most fulfilling life, beginning with a childhood trait to give you an edge out in the world, you’re tasked with living a whole life, balancing money, resources, and stress, all in an effort to attain the most long term happiness. Each round, players will have a limited amount of time, represented by hour glass tokens, to embark on projects, purchase items and activities, advance their careers, and take on romantic interests, all in an effort to acquire that elusive happiness.
The board has 9 worker placement spots, with 4 of them being dedicated to simply acquiring more of the game’s resources. Creativity, knowledge, influence, and money. One action is called Overtime, where you get 2 more time tokens to work with, but you incur 2 stress.
The four remaining spaces involve you taking one of the 4 types of cards. Project, Items/Activities, Get a Job, and Get a Partner. Each of these cards work in different ways
Project cards come in 3 different styles, basic project, group projects, and one-time projects. With basic projects, you must start at level 1, pay the cost, and reap the benefits. On future turns, you may spend 1 time token to advance to level 2, and so on until level 4 has been achieved. Group projects have you taking the card into your play area, and other players can spend 1 time token to contribute to the group project, enhancing the benefit for everyone who contributes at the end of the around. The one-time projects have you taking the project, and choosing which level to pay for, and then that’s it. You’ll reap the corresponding reward, but you won’t be able to progress this project any further.
The Items/Activities generally cost money, but when you take the card into your play area, you can choose which level you want to start at, and can spend time tokens on future turns to progress deeper into that hobby. Many hobbies require you to pay a resource during the upkeep phase, but will provide you with a benefit for doing so.
The Career is unique in that you can only have one job at a time. When you take the job action, you need to pay the entry cost, and you’ll earn some money. During each upkeep phase, you’ll need to spend time and some resources to keep your job, but you’ll enjoy the benefit of income, hopefully enabling you to do the things you really want. During your turn, you can spend a time token to get a promotion, which allows you to advance to the next level of the same job type that you currently have. You pay the resource cost for the promotion, then search the card row and the deck for the next available card of the same job type, and replace your existing job. The next upkeep will demand more resources and time from you, but your compensation will be higher.
Going on a date allows you to take a partner into your play area, and generally get a small benefit. On future turns, if you have whatever your partner’s prerequisite are, you can spend a time token to progress your relationship. On future upkeep turns, your partner will demand some time tokens, but give you long term happiness in return. If you take a second partner, you immediately get a stress, and will get another stress per partner in excess of 1 during every upkeep.
So that’s the bulk of the cards, you can only have 3 cards active at a time, except for items and activities. If you take a 4th, you immediately incur a stress, and will get more stress if you have more than 3 cards during the upkeep phase. If you want to discard a card, you can, but you’ll incur stress and lose one short term happiness. If you have positive short term happiness, you pay one resource less for projects (but not activities), and vice versa for negative short term happiness. If you rest or relax, you can remove some of your stress, as long as you remain in the same colour area. The only way to go down to the next colour is by getting a heart from one of your cards, which are quite rare.
Review
I want to start with what I enjoyed. I loved the stories that The Pursuit of Happiness generates. Early in one game, bear took on the project “seek funding”, then proceeded to ignore the job cards for the rest of the game, while the charismatic Bigfoot promptly got married and started a family, while also becoming CEO, locking up 5 of his 6 time tokens at the start of every round. The hardworking family man only had 1 time token to do anything, which he ended up spending to get just enough knowledge to maintain his job position until the end of the game. At one point I, while happily married, decided to seek the short term happiness by taking a second partner, stress be damned.
We all found an emergent narrative to justify our decisions, and that’s easily the best part of this game. Joking and laughing with your friends at the ridiculous situations your fictional persona has embarked on. The theme is baked into every card and action, making it easy to understand what you’re doing, or why something behaves in the way that it does (like raising a family gives you less time for activities).
I adore the art in The Pursuit of Happiness. The cartoony style exudes a whimsical charm. One thing that truly impresses me is the inclusivity that comes with the design of the partner cards. The fact that they are double-sided, with identical stats, offers players the freedom to choose the character that resonates with them the most.
On the flip side, learning to play The Pursuit of Happiness can be a frustrating experience. Everything looks similar but acts in different ways, and there are exceptions galore. You can only have 3 cards, except for items. You have to start at Level 1 for projects, except for the one time project. You can jump down to any level in items, but not projects. If you put two time tokens on the same space, you get a stress, except on cards. Every rule has an exception, that makes it a burden to teach and learn.
There are a plethora of decisions on every turn. You have 9 action spots on the board, 16 cards to pick from, resources to manage, and card actions in front of you and other players that you can choose to do on any of your turns. The sheer number of choices is paralyzing, and simultaneously uninteresting. At one point, I was trying to figure out what to do, but realized that I didn’t really want to do anything. None of the actions were exciting, most were just different ways to trade some resources for other resources.
Initially, I was really excited about the push and pull of the stress track. I loved the idea of pushing up to the colour border, only to drop back down, and possibly even earn extra actions from lowering the stress level. But we literally saw a single heart throughout the entire game, making the stress track much more of a detriment. Bigfoot, who only had a single action per turn, was locked in his situation, unable to take a single stress, lest he push into the next colour section and lose his single action that was available to him. It’s easy to fall into a death spiral on that stress track, and I wish there were more ways to play with that aspect of the game.
Finally, the game is fiddly. From all the rules exceptions, to constantly converting resources from one type to another, I was frustrated by needing to turn on 6 cardboard chits to get 8 different cardboard chits in return. “I spend 3 social and 2 money and get 4 knowledge and 3 creativity, but I only have a 5 social, so I need 2 social back”. With conversions happening at nearly every action, this was by far the most annoying part of the game.
The Pursuit of Happiness has merit. As I said above, there’s charm, it generates great stories, and it’s really an experience worth having! But I don’t feel like there’s much depth. The game plays fairly similarly every time, and even when you find ways to buck the system, and avoid taking a job or partner and remain competitive, it’s not particularly interesting. My wife called it Ecclesiastes in a box, nothing really matters, your choices will all lead you to the same place ultimately. In all my plays, the scores between the winner and lose of the game were within 6 points of each other (winning score being around 65 points each time). Yes, you can choose to take on projects, and items, and jobs that strike your fancy, but in the end, you’re left wondering if your choices really matter.
I enjoyed playing The Pursuit of Happiness, make no mistake. But the short term happiness that this game provides just isn’t worth the stress that comes from learning to play it over again, and struggling through the myriad of decisions to arrive at the same destination every time.
