A past secretary of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, said, “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” Genius Games continues to make education fun with their newest game, Ecosystem: Coral Reef.
This is a great game for just about any age, but is recommended for 8 and over. It can be played by up to six players, but has slightly different rules for playing with less than three. For those of you who game a bit, the mechanics are similar to Mesozooic. There is placement of cards into a matrix, but scoring is slightly more complex and without the time constraints that bring so much joy.
The setup is very simple. Each player is dealt 10 organism cards. There are eleven different cards, with nine of them grouped into three different food webs — producer, prey, and predators. The remaining two organism cards, turtle and the octopus, “group” alone. Each player picks a card from their hand, places it face down on the table and passes their hand to the left. At the same time the players flip their card and place it in front of them.
Each card is used to build your own coral reef, which is composed of a 4×5 matrix of cards. Each card has a different rule for placement, which supports scoring. So, for example, a shark will score two points for each card from the prey food group in the same row or column. The whale accumulates points by adding points for each krill in your ecosystem, but an adjacent card must be flipped over before scoring, resulting in the loss of points.
After the first round, players are again dealt 10 more cards. In this second round, the players pass to the right. The conclusion of the second round completes your reef and then the scoring begins.
The scoring can be a bit challenging, which is most likely the basis for the age recommendation. The understanding of the relationship between the different food webs to each other and life within a food web is essential. There are player aid cards that outline the relationship of each organism within its food web and to other organism cards.
My gaming crew has played this a few times. The general consensus has been a white knuckling of the player aid as each card placed has implications for your overall score and you really don’t know the scope of the cards for the round until you have passed enough times to see all the cards available. Of course with larger groups, there are very few cards left, once you finally see the hand of the player to both your left and right.
The small size of the organism cards was strange at first, until you see them arranged into the matrix that you use to build your coral reef. One of the biggest challenges was the octopus organism card. It is worth three points and allows the player to move one card or swap two cards. Invariably, I didn’t realize I need to swap or move until the next to the last pass and the card is not available. However, it can really help order your coral reef to maximize your scoring.
The educational value may not be evident, but there is an elegance to this game as it is obvious that the proposed value for correct placement of different organisms was done intentionally to emphasize the interconnectedness of the organisms on the structure and survival of a coral reef.
When we played, the player who typically won was the one who was best with the placement of the predators in balance with the other food webs. I, of course, spent all my time focused on the producer — the coral, krill, or plankton. This strategy kept me in striking range of a win, but I was always edged out by the multiplying effect of the predators. This reflects the fundamental fact that the key to the coral reef as with this game is balance of all the food webs and organisms.
The pure beauty of the organism cards and the easy game mechanics of pick-and-place make this ideal for playing with kids. If playing predominantly with smaller kids you may want to consider varying how to score to not let the complexity of scoring outweigh the fun of the game. On the other hand, it is a good exercise in addition and multiplication, so there is another benefit. Regardless, Ecosystem: Coral Reef is a great game, with next to no setup required, and relatively easy gameplay.
Ecosystem: Coral Reef is available from Genius Games directly and other various online platforms.
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