![SPIEL '18 Preview: Terra Shifter, or Make the Earth Move](https://cf.geekdo-images.com/zoE7Tu9ubi5OVlliB2boJA__medium/img/QkhMeaqJ-2P3wq41FNXbmy9jls8=/fit-in/500x500/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic4357054.jpg)
Terra Shifter challenges 1-4 players to transform the Earth — whether by rotating a tile, flipping a tile, or shifting a row or column to move one tile to the other end of a line — in order to complete one of the personal missions held by the active player. Missions will be something like having exactly five penguins in a snow terrain or having two sets of exactly four sheep in different grasslands. If this player completes a mission, then they can also complete one of the four goals that need to be fulfilled in order to win the game. If you can't complete a mission in the five actions available on your turn, then you burn mission cards from your hand and the deck — and if you can't draw a mission card when you need to, you lose.
While marketed as a co-operative game, Terra Shifter doesn't fit the "fighting arm-in-arm against a common foe" model of most co-operative games because it's difficult for players to team up or chain their actions together. You do your thing, then I do my thing, and so on. Maybe we'll be able to knock out a goal together, but it's hard to work in concert since I don't know what your missions are. I suppose that we could all reveal our missions, but at that point why are we bothering to play together since we've eliminated any need for other players?
Just play the game as a solitaire challenge, and spend as much time as you want puzzling over how to do things without forcing others to sit around waiting for you — and when you're ready for it, start adding disasters to the mix to up the difficulty level.