Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
My view of criticism is that, when done well, it is generative and contextualizing to the form it critiques. Having the privilege of reviewing and analyzing games comes with a degree of responsibility. Don’t misunderstand me—there is zero responsibility to a corporation, a designer, and anyone else who has made the business of games their business. My responsibility is to the mysterious and magical mental maneuver that allows a game to become more than pieces and rules and become something that facilitates agreement between people. Lofty, I know.
In my mind, players of games are akin to guests. Sure, a guest can be a big ol’ jerk, but when you’re playing a game, you’re stepping into an experience that is supposed to connect you to other people, to new ideas, interesting decisions, new concepts. You’re not a line item in a budget spreadsheet.
This perspective, coupled with some professional jealousy (I think I have some really cool game designs of my own that are worth sharing) can lead me to be seemingly harsh about a game that another critic might deem “acceptable” or “fine.” But I’m not that other critic. Enormous amounts of resources go into the creation of a mass market game, and when the product is derivative slop, that is a tragic and frankly, insulting waste. When a game has a myopic view of what the art form looks like, what ideas have entered the space, no matter how pretty it might be, I’m…displeased.
Enter Oasis: New Life on A Distant World.
It’s Wingspan, but your tableau falls apart
Oasis is a game where you draw cards and play them in a tableau over the course of 3 rounds. At the end of each round, there’s a competition to have the most icons of one of three types, and then the bottom half of your tableau is removed.
The idea is that you’re building an alien biome of some kind? I guess you’re a god, just like seeding a world with various creatures. You start with a hand of cards, and you play them to either the surface or the subterrain. You can put subterrain cards wherever you want in the subterrain. Surface cards have two icons in the bottom, which must be supported by icons in the two subterrain cards below it. It’s reminiscent of Wingspan or Ark Nova (aka you can’t play the card unless you’ve got the right resources/position/symbols to play it). There’s just nothing novel about it. There’s so many games that do something akin to this: Earth, Imperial Settlers, Forest Shuffle, you name it.
When you play cards, you get more card draws, or chits that are worth points at endgame. You can also discard cards to remove cards, which can gain you points. The card powers are fairly simplistic, typically drawing cards, gaining chits, etc. Mainly you get points for removing cards with an action, removing them when the flood happens (the end of round clear out of your bottom cards), or when you place them.
There are some mechanical flourishes, but none that are surprising. There’s a mechanism where you get a point every time it rolls around on your turn and you’re passed (see The Golden Ages or a dozen others). Many tableau builders feature a tableau that falls apart or destructs (Space Station Phoenix is exemplary). Race for the Galaxy contains 100 percent of the ideas present in this game and still feels innovative compared to this despite it having been released 19 years ago.
There just isn’t anything here of note. The game has nothing distinctive or interesting to say; in fact, it seems designed to be forgotten. The art is middlingly exciting, but it’s wasted on basically making alien-looking versions of terrestrial Earth animals. It’s like in Star Trek when you go to the planet of humanoids that are exactly humanoid except they’re green. You’re not going to remember it.
Shame
Which is all a shame, for the reasons I outlined in the introduction. The OP, which is the definition of corporatized production of games (google USAopoly) has all the resources in the world to try things, but instead this is what they publish. Derivative hackery.
But really, I’m not sure how much a corporation is to blame? People buy things, and things that are like other things. The publication of this game was likely a researched decision, that if something is familiar and derivative enough of something that made a zillion dollars (cough, cough, Wingspan), The OP will make money.
I hear whisperings around the board game community campfire that there aren’t any cool releases hitting shelves this year. Why do you, reader, think that is? Is it because you’re expected to buy things like this? You’re a line item too. This is what it feels like to be turned into a market, rather than being respected as a person who deserves to be delighted, to find new and exciting things that have the potential to transform you.
Publishers should think twice about producing slop because they think people are not smart or discerning enough, or that playing it safe by hemming so closely to existing work is an equation for success.
Find a true oasis, like maybe the original Oasis.a
My view of criticism is that, when done well, it is generative and contextualizing to the form it critiques. Having the privilege of reviewing and analyzing games comes with a degree of responsibility. Don’t misunderstand me—there is zero responsibility to a corporation, a designer, and anyone else who has made the business of games their business. My responsibility is to the mysterious and magical mental maneuver that allows a game to become more than pieces and rules and become something that facilitates agreement between people. Lofty, I know.
In my mind, players of games are akin to guests. Sure, a guest can be a big ol’ jerk, but when you’re playing a game, you’re stepping into an experience that is supposed to connect you to other people, to new ideas, interesting decisions, new concepts. You’re not a line item in a budget spreadsheet.
This perspective, coupled with some professional jealousy (I think I have some really cool game designs of my own that are worth sharing) can lead me to be seemingly harsh about a game that another critic might deem “acceptable” or “fine.” But I’m not that other critic. Enormous amounts of resources go into the creation of a mass market game, and when the product is derivative slop, that is a tragic and frankly, insulting waste. When a game has a myopic view of what the art form looks like, what ideas have entered the space, no matter how pretty it might be, I’m…displeased.
Enter Oasis: New Life on A Distant World.
It’s Wingspan, but your tableau falls apart
Oasis is a game where you draw cards and play them in a tableau over the course of 3 rounds. At the end of each round, there’s a competition to have the most icons of one of three types, and then the bottom half of your tableau is removed.
The idea is that you’re building an alien biome of some kind? I guess you’re a god, just like seeding a world with various creatures. You start with a hand of cards, and you play them to either the surface or the subterrain. You can put subterrain cards wherever you want in the subterrain. Surface cards have two icons in the bottom, which must be supported by icons in the two subterrain cards below it. It’s reminiscent of Wingspan or Ark Nova (aka you can’t play the card unless you’ve got the right resources/position/symbols to play it). There’s just nothing novel about it. There’s so many games that do something akin to this: Earth, Imperial Settlers, Forest Shuffle, you name it.
When you play cards, you get more card draws, or chits that are worth points at endgame. You can also discard cards to remove cards, which can gain you points. The card powers are fairly simplistic, typically drawing cards, gaining chits, etc. Mainly you get points for removing cards with an action, removing them when the flood happens (the end of round clear out of your bottom cards), or when you place them.
There are some mechanical flourishes, but none that are surprising. There’s a mechanism where you get a point every time it rolls around on your turn and you’re passed (see The Golden Ages or a dozen others). Many tableau builders feature a tableau that falls apart or destructs (Space Station Phoenix is exemplary). Race for the Galaxy contains 100 percent of the ideas present in this game and still feels innovative compared to this despite it having been released 19 years ago.
There just isn’t anything here of note. The game has nothing distinctive or interesting to say; in fact, it seems designed to be forgotten. The art is middlingly exciting, but it’s wasted on basically making alien-looking versions of terrestrial Earth animals. It’s like in Star Trek when you go to the planet of humanoids that are exactly humanoid except they’re green. You’re not going to remember it.
Shame
Which is all a shame, for the reasons I outlined in the introduction. The OP, which is the definition of corporatized production of games (google USAopoly) has all the resources in the world to try things, but instead this is what they publish. Derivative hackery.
But really, I’m not sure how much a corporation is to blame? People buy things, and things that are like other things. The publication of this game was likely a researched decision, that if something is familiar and derivative enough of something that made a zillion dollars (cough, cough, Wingspan), The OP will make money.
I hear whisperings around the board game community campfire that there aren’t any cool releases hitting shelves this year. Why do you, reader, think that is? Is it because you’re expected to buy things like this? You’re a line item too. This is what it feels like to be turned into a market, rather than being respected as a person who deserves to be delighted, to find new and exciting things that have the potential to transform you.
Publishers should think twice about producing slop because they think people are not smart or discerning enough, or that playing it safe by hemming so closely to existing work is an equation for success.
Find a true oasis, like maybe the original Oasis.
Oasis: New Life on a Distant World details
- Designer: David "Duvey" Rudow, George Feledichuk, Leo Taylor
- Artists: Fabio Frencl
- Publishers: The Op Games
- Release Date: 2026
- Player count : 1 - 5
- Age range : 10+
- Time range : 45 - 60 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Hand Management
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.67692 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.0.
- More articles about Oasis: New Life on a Distant World.
