Start Families, Pursue Your Dreams, and Battle Stress in Your Best Life

Will you travel the world on multiple vacations? Raise a family? Take on a pet? Prioritize your education or buy a house? Watch out for stress and pursue joy and happiness in order to create Your Best Life.

Published by WizKids, Your Best Life is a flip-and-write game designed for 1-8 players, with a 45-minute play time.

Gameplay

Each player takes a player board and names their character. You also take a family board. You can either play on a team with just yourself, in which case you flip the family board over to the single side, or you choose another person to be on a team with, in which case you share a family board flipped to the couple’s side. Each family (single or a couple) draws two shared goals and chooses one, discarding the other. Each player then draws two personal goals and chooses one, discarding the other.

The game is played over 10 rounds. Every round, four action cards are drawn to form the display for that round. Each player chooses which action card to use. In a couple, the two players must choose separate cards. If you are on a card that at least one other player chooses, everyone on that card marks off one box in their Like trackers on their player boards. Some action cards will show one or two stress dice icons. After everyone has chosen their cards, one die is rolled for each icon, determining how many stress boxes players on those cards must mark off on their player boards.

Next, players use the action icons on the action cards they chose. Meditation icons allows them to erase marked boxes on their stress trackers, wilds can be used for any action, and the other action icons allow them to mark off boxes on the matching trackers on their player and family boards. Some trackers share an icon — for example, the home tracker and the vehicle tracker both require the money action. You choose which one you are spending your action on, and mark off the first empty box on the tracker starting on its left side.

When you reach certain boxes on your trackers, you earn rewards. Some might increase your happiness or give you joy, others might let you mark off other boxes or award you points.  Some will also earn your teammate a bonus (or give you the bonus twice if you are playing as a single family).

If you spend the time action to draw a children’s card, that card will come with its own tracker that you must mark off before the end of the game or else you will lose points. You can also spend two money actions (or one and convince another player to spend a second one to go with you) to go on a vacation. You then draw a vacation card. If you went alone, you get both bonuses listed, or if you go with someone you each choose one of the two bonuses. The Like tracker sometimes allows you to draw a Post a Story card. You then draw two such cards and choose one to play. You get the bonus on the card, and then everyone may choose to take that bonus as well. You get to mark off an additional box on your Like tracker for each player who took the bonus.

Some boxes on some trackers have an opportunity symbol next to another action symbol. On the turn you mark off a box with an opportunity symbol, you may choose to also spend the indicated action if able, to mark off one box on your opportunity tracker, which will be worth a set number of points at the end of the game depending on how many you are able to mark off.

After you use your actions, you get a bonus action. If playing as a couple, you choose one action from the card your teammate selected at the start of the round. If playing as a single family, you choose one action on your card to perform again.

At the end of the round, you write down how much happiness you currently have and how much joy you earned that round (happiness and joy is often affected by bonuses or your current stress level). Your happiness does not reset between rounds, but your joy does. Every few rounds you check your personal goal. You earn joy based on the number of boxes you have marked off on the indicated trackers.

The game ends after 10 rounds. Players count up how many points each of their trackers is worth based on how far along they got on different trackers. You add up the happiness and joy you had at the end of each round. You also check your shared goal card and lose points based on the number of boxes not marked off of the indicated tracker, and lose points for any children cards whose trackers you did not complete. Finally, you take your number of balance points (which are given as rewards from completing sections of trackers) and multiple it by your lowest scoring tracker and add the resulting number to your score total. If you are playing as a single family, you then double your score total. The player with the most points wins the game.

Review

Your Best Life has a lot going on, but once you start playing you realize it has a natural, easy-to-follow flow. The fact that you can play as a team of either one or two, and that this can be mixed and matched across everyone playing, is nice and flexible and really lets you adjust the game for player count or player preference. Also, playing as a couple in the game can help with teaching the rules. Both also have their own strengths and weaknesses.

It can be fun to work with a teammate towards your shared goals or marking things off on the family board, but it’s also enjoyable to focus on your own plans. The need to choose separate action cards from your teammate can be constricting, while as a single family you’re choosing your bonus action from your own card on your turn rather than potentially having more actions to choose from off of your teammate’s card.

The game is bright, colorful, and has a solid component quality to it. The player boards are easy to read, even with multiple trackers spread across them. The different backgrounds, goals, and cards you can draw all offer variety and variation from game to game.

There are really two ways you can approach Your Best Life. You can play it as a straight-up game of points, trying to maximize your choices, and trying to win the game as best you can, or you can really dive into the story element of the game, building up this fictional life and this character you are or this couple you are a part of. There is even a story variant, turning Your Best Life into more of a role-playing game. Either of these approaches can be fun, and while we enjoyed it most when leaning into the story, it’s definitely going to depend on your personal preference.

The rulebook isn’t the most clearly presented, and since there’s a good bit going on in this game, that is an issue. There are places where it focuses solely on if you’re playing as a couple, they explain concepts in a strange order so that you don’t really have context for things they’re talking about, and there were several instances where we just had to take our best guess how things were resolved.

Your Best Life is a highly enjoyable, very thematic flip-and-write game. There is a little bit of player interaction, in the likes and stories, and being able to take vacations with another player, or if you’re playing as a couple, but there’s no take-that or blocking one another. The game does take a little time to teach, but once you start playing it doesn’t feel too rules heavy and turns are fairly smooth with simultaneous play.

Pros: Very thematic, simultaneous turns keeps the game moving, multiple ways to choose to play

Cons: Rulebook is messy and occasionally unclear, does take a bit of time to teach

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.