Environmental

Arctic Survival is about using your instincts to prevail in the coldest and most remote place on earth. The object is to make it safely to your igloo before your opponent can make it safely to theirs. In the way are treacherous moving ice floes, with icebergs and thin ice blocking your path. Lurking within are friendly and unfriendly Orca whales and smart penguins that can guide the way across the ice floes. Once across, unfriendly polar bears, wolves and many other types of arctic wildlife confront you as you try to reach the safety and comfort of the igloo waiting across this vast ever changing environment.

You're the leader of a great nation which is currently expanding. Over the course of the seven decades covered by the game, you will have to invest in infrastructures and industries, provide your country with energy and finance the mercurial forces of research in order to remain competitive.

But prosperity has a price. You owe it to future generations to leave them a healthy world. Pollution lurks, but will you be able to limit it?

Prosperity has players building up their countries on a grand but abstract scale, with them needing to balance concerns over energy and ecology with the constant need for capital and the long-term goal of prosperity points.

The game starts with 24 tiles available, half on the energy side of the shared game board and half on the ecology side. Two tiles on each side are placed on levels 1-6, with the players each having two research markers – energy and ecology – that start at level 1. Each player has an individual game board with color-coded spaces for tiles, a pollution track, and tracks for energy and ecology. A stack of 36 tiles – with tiles arranged by decades: the six from 2030 on the bottom, then the five from 2020, and so on to the five from 1970 – is set up during the playing area.

On a turn, a player draws the top tile from the stack, then everyone resolves the symbol highlighted on the tile:

Energy – for a positive value, earn money; for a negative value, lose money or increase your pollution
Ecology – remove or add discs to your pollution track
Capital – earn money for each capital symbol on the tiles you own
Research – advance one research marker one space for each research symbol on tiles you own
Prosperity – score points for each prosperity symbol on tiles you own, but only if your pollution isn't maxed out

Once everyone has done this, the active player takes two actions, repeating an action if desired. The possible actions are:

Take money.
Remove one pollution marker.
Move forward one space on one research track.
Buy a tile, with the amount owed being based on whether the tile is energy or ecology and the level of your corresponding research marker. If you buy a tile of the same level, the cost is €100; if the tile is of a higher level, you pay €100, plus €100 for each level; and if the tile is lower, you pay a flat €50.

Players have limited space for tiles on their individual boards, especially since the tiles and spaces are color-coded, but players can cover existing tiles, if desired, losing any benefits (or penalties) in the process. Some parts of the individual board are off-limits to new infrastructure until you first provide transport; toll roads, highways and even train systems have drawbacks of their own, but ideally you'll be able to build your way past those trouble spots without causing too much pollution.

When the final tile is drawn, that player finishes his turn, then everyone scores: twice for their energy and ecology levels, one for capital (with money being converted into prosperity points), once for research on both tracks (with points for those researching the most), and once for prosperity. Whoever tallies the most prosperity points wins!

Based on the novel by Frank Schätzing, continuing the Kosmos line of literature-based games. The world is facing an ecological catastrophe caused by previously unknown marine life forms. Each player represents a nation sending their scientists out to confront the threat.

The action cards form the core of the game. For each round, the cards are shuffled and placed in a row. Each player in turn order takes the leftmost card from the row, until there are no more cards left. Instead of the leftmost card, players can also buy a different card by paying with victory points.

At the end of each round, players score points according to the sizes of their largest research networks. At the end of the game, extra points are given out based on whether research stations are connected to the center of the game board.

In the 20th Century, every country strives to develop and improve, each in its own way. Some become financial leaders. Others become centers of learning. Both science and commerce serve to propel nations toward the future – but toward what kind of future? Growth produces waste, and the greatest advances may come with the greatest cost to the environment. How will these countries mitigate the inevitable ecological catastrophes?

Your goal is to build a land free of garbage and pollution – a land where the environment is as healthy as the economy. Only then can you consider your country to be truly developed.
The game consists of six rounds, during which you oversee the urbanization of your country. Some lands produce income. Some produce scientific research. Others improve the quality of life. Your research allows you to discover new technologies that will shape the way your nation develops. Science can even help you avert ecological catastrophes. At the end of each round, your lands provide you the money and research that you will need to deal with the challenges of the next round.

You accumulate points each round, based on your nation’s quality of life. At the end of rounds two and four, you also score bonus points for certain aspects of your country’s development. At the end of round six, you will score bonus points based on your country’s income, research, and environmental quality. The player with the most points wins, having built the country with the highest standard of living.

(from Czech Games Edition website)

2212: Ginkgo Biloba, the oldest and strongest tree in the world, has become the symbol of a new method for building cities in symbiosis with nature. Humans have exhausted the resources that the Earth offered them, and humanity must now develop cities that maintain a delicate balance between resource production and consumption. Habitable space is scarce, however, and mankind must now face the challenge of building ever upwards. To develop this new type of city, you will gather a team of experts around you, and try to become the best urban planner for Ginkgopolis.

In Ginkgopolis, the city tiles come in three colors: yellow, which provides victory points; red, which provides resources; and blue, which provides new city tiles. Some tiles start in play, and they're surrounded by letter markers that show where new tiles can be placed.

On a turn, each player chooses a card from his hand simultaneously. Players reveal these cards, adding new tiles to the border of the city in the appropriate location or placing tiles on top of existing tiles. Each card in your hand that you don't play is passed on to your left-hand neighbor, so keep in mind how your play might set up theirs!

When you add a new tile to the city, you take a "power" card of the same color, and these cards provide you additional abilities during the game, allowing you to scale up your building and point-scoring efforts.