Life: TCG Preview

Life the Trading Card Game is a very interesting premise. The theme of the game is that you are collecting different mammals from around the world. You can then build decks from these cards to play a sort of ‘top-trumps’ game where the best stats win. The loser discards their card and the last player with cards in their deck is the winner.

As it’s a TCG, you have the standard buy packs trade duplicates, collect the whole set aspect of the game. But there is also a very interesting nature conservation twist to this game that I’ve never seen before.

The cards themselves are split into 3 tiers. You’ve got 1^st edition, 2^nd edition rare and 2^rd edition common. The 2^nd edition cards have nice sketches of the animals on them whereas the 1^st edition cards have a bit more detail in the artwork and a nice holographic background. All these cards also have an interesting fact about the depicted animal as well. The thing that really sets Life: TCG apart is how the number of these cards are managed.

The number of holographic 1^st edition cards for each animal has a total print run equal to the estimated wild population of that animal. That means there are some phenomenally rare 1^st edition cards to be collected. You can still collect these animals as 2^nd Edition rares, but it gives having those holographic cards a sort of bittersweetness to it. It’s nice and lucky to have one, but at the same time the reason they are so rare is because sadly there are not many of these creatures left in the wild.

That’s where the other nice thing about this game comes in. 20% of the profits are going to charities which are helping to revive these wild populations. And it doesn’t stop there. The designers have plans to cover other areas of the animal kingdom with sets based around birds, lizards, and fish all potentially in the pipeline.

Life TCG is currently on Kickstarter and has smashed its funding goal. It is currently looking to fulfil to backers in mid 2023 so go check it out!