Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/8111783/mine-your-business

Designer: Art Casey
Publisher: Envy Born Games
Artist: Gabi Naftaly

Mine Your Business is a quirky and quick action selection game where you are a gnome travelling through a mine with the goal of gaining the most treasure. Each turn, players choose between moving their gnome in the mine, rotating a card, swapping a card, changing the direction of a camp card, and eventually in the solo game, revealing a flipped over card. The game is played in rounds, and each round is marked by the advancement of the mine cart along the outside of the mine card play area. Once it’s made a full revolution, the game ends.

Without getting too much into the nitty gritty of the mechanics, here are some pros and cons for this one.

Pros:
1) The componentry is nice and it all fits well inside the reasonably sized game box.
2) As purchased, the base game comes with multiple ways to play including solo, two player competitive (the standard game), two player co-op, three to four player rules, and a one to four player cooperative version.
3) Design and artwork wise, the game is fun, whimsical, and overall quite thematic. You could argue that the theme is a little pasted on and could be anything, but I think they made a solid effort in its integration into the appearance and experience.
4) It plays within 15-20 minutes once you know the rules, so it’s super quick, set-up and clean-up times aren’t long, and it takes up an appropriate amount of table space for what it is and the fact it’s supposed to be a mine.

Cons:
1) At least solo, this game is difficult! The solo mode has a mini campaign that I played through and while there are only three chapters, I struggled. Ironically, I did better on chapter three than chapter two, but even after a few plays of chapter two, I have yet to succeed (it’s possible I just suck).
2) That said, the mini campaign is a nice inclusion, and it is fun, but it can get very frustrating. Unfortunately, for me, the story line and mechanics aren’t quite interesting enough to want to keep playing after a few failures.
3) Variability and replayability are moderate. The game play gets samey even with different scenarios; the mechanics don’t change much so it gets repetitive.

Overall, Mine Your Business is a fun puzzle that plays quickly and has various modes of play, but it’s not a forever game in my collection. I look forward to a few more plays, but I can’t see myself regularly pulling it off the shelf. I do have to say, it’s fun to respond “Mine Your Business” when someone asks what you’re doing or playing, though. 😂