Theme: Biology

Twenty years after his expedition around the world, Charles Darwin is writing On the Origin of Species. He wants to gather new information about animal life, particularly about continents he hardly explored. Who other than young naturalists, eager for discovery, could help the renowned scholar finish writing his most famous work?

In In the Footsteps of Darwin, players are junior naturalists who have just arrived aboard the Beagle to help Charles Darwin finish his book On the Origin of Species. During this journey, you will study animals, carry out cartographic surveys, publish your findings, and develop theories. Starting with the naturalist controlling the Darwin token, naturalists take turns in clockwise order, performing these two steps in order:

Study an animal or take inspiration from a character: Choose one of the three tiles facing the Beagle and place it onto your naturalist's notebook. It may be either an animal to study or a character from the Beagle's previous journey who will inspire you. Gain the bonuses depicted or any additional scoring bonuses triggered by the tile's placement.

Voyage of the Beagle: After placing a tile on your notebook, move the Beagle as many spaces forward as the distance between the Beagle and the tile you just selected (1-3 spaces), then draw a new tile to replace the empty space on the journey board.

Your goal is to score more points than your opponents to determine who contributed the most to On the Origin of Species.

—description from publisher

When all you can identify in the horizon for many long days is the line that detaches the sea from the sky, the glimpse of a distant shore appearing before you will make you shiver at the understanding that the adventure is about to begin.

You find yourself astonished, landing on the shore that will be the origin of an extensive exploration through the Galapagos, a magic place of inconceivable beauty and endless biodiversity. There, you will gather repertoires and expand your knowledge of the natural sciences. Your eyes will learn how to detect the hidden species in the tropical forest, gazing at the countless colors and textures of nature. After inspiring hours spent studying and getting to enlightening conclusions, you will rest under a sparkling sky, admiring the stunning complexity of the animal realm.

Darwin's Journey is a worker-placement Eurogame in which players recall Charles Darwin's memories of his adventure through the Galapagos islands, which contributed to the development of his theory of evolution.

With the game's innovative worker progression system, each worker will have to study the disciplines that are a prerequisite to perform several actions in the game, such as exploration, correspondence, gathering, and dispatch of repertoires found on the island to museums in order to contribute to the human knowledge of biology. The game lasts five rounds, and thanks to several short- and long-term objectives, every action you take will grant victory points in different ways.

In 1958, Demitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut started an experiment on domestication. From a large group of foxes, they selected the ones that reacted to humans with more curiosity and less aggression. In each generation, they selected only the friendliest pups to become parents — hoping to recreate the process that originally led to domestication thousands of years ago. The experiment made stunning progress. Even though the foxes were chosen only for their friendliness, they soon started to get many of the physical traits that we associate with domesticated animals — like spots, floppy ears, and curly tails. As communication opened up, the foxes made major contributions to our understanding of how these traits are expressed. The experiment continues to this day.

In The Fox Experiment, you’ll breed your own domesticated foxes. In each round you'll select a pair of fox parents who have certain traits. You'll gain those specific trait dice, roll them, then try to move them around to make complete trait symbols which you'll then mark off on your pup card. You'll then gain trait tokens depending on how many traits you marked off which you'll use to upgrade tracks on your personal player board.

At the end of the round, the previous generation of foxes will be cleared and all of the new pups will be moved to the kennel — thus becoming candidates to be chosen as parents in the next round. The game ends after 5 rounds and you'll gain points for pleasing patrons (end of game scoring bonuses), studies completed (personal player objectives), if you ever won the friendliest fox award, upgrades on your personal player board, and extra tokens. The player with the most points wins!

—description from the publisher

A new pathology has just appeared! Patient Zero has been identified, and it's up to you to find the antidote as soon as possible to save the patient and humanity!

Save Patient Zero pits two labs against each other. Each lab employs one or two scientists (i.e., players), while another player plays a lab computer named Savvy. The labs compete to identify an antidote of three molecules, with the labs typically sharing no information with one another; whichever lab finds the antidote first wins.

The general idea of the game is to use lab tools in the best sequence possible to identify the three molecules out of 25 that make up the antidote. (These 25 molecules are arranged in a 5x5 grid on each lab's worksheet.) At the start of the game, Savvy looks at the top three molecule cards in that deck, then sets them aside. These are the molecules the labs must identify. On a turn, each lab submits a tool card to Savvy to show what they want to do in the round, and whichever lab submits first takes its action first in that round. Actions include:

Samply: Draw three sample cards from your lab's deck, and give them to Savvy. Each sample card depicts five molecules, and Savvy will identify which of them show at least one molecule used in the antidote.
Mikroskopo: Choose two cards from your lab's deck, and give them to Savvy, who will treat them like the cards in "Samply".
Dedukto: Receive five molecule cards from Savvy. You (but not the other lab) now know these molecules are not in the antidote.
Centrofugo: Place your centrifuge on your lab worksheet so that it points to four molecules. Savvy then indicates whether any of these molecules are in the antidote.
Scanpad: Place a cardboard device on your worksheet to highlight six molecules in a 2x3 grid. Savvy then indicates how many molecules highlighted (0-3) are part of the antidote.
Spionado: Savvy takes two lab cards from the opposing lab that do not have any molecules in the antidote on them, then shows them to you.
Antidote: Circle three molecules on your worksheet. If all three are in the antidote, you win! If not, Savvy will indicate how many of the circled molecules are in the antidote.

Each lab has a limited number of actions in its deck — eighteen total, with three Samply, two Dedukto, one Scanpad, two Antidote, etc. — so use them wisely, especially the Antidote because if you fail to identify the correct three molecules a second time, then your lab loses the game automatically.

To play Save Patient Zero as a two-player game, each lab draws three molecule cards from the deck, and the opposing lab must identify these three molecules before you can identify the three molecules they drew. Each lab takes the role of Savvy for the opposing lab.

Cellulose: A Plant Cell Biology Game is a worker placement game that puts 1-5 players inside a plant cell, where they will compete over limited resources in order to undergo photosynthesis, produce carbohydrates, and build the cell wall. With everyone vying for the same actions, players must time their use of proteins, hormones, and cell component cards in order to diversify their strategies and outplay the competition.

Cellulose is the standalone sequel to Cytosis (2017). It has some of the same DNA, but Cellulose expands familiar game systems, allowing players greater control over available resources, strategic paths, and even game length.

—description from the publisher