Ecosystem – Genius Games Review

Don’t you love it when things just come together? This was the case when reviewing Ecosystem from Genis Games. We were studying the importance of keystone species in our daily science lesson from BookShark Science Level D when it occurred to us that this game would be a perfect opportunity to put into practice what we were learning that week.

The game is very simple to follow. You are to create a biodiverse ecosystem with the most diversity to win the most points. The player with the most points is the winner.

• Game Type: Card
• Age: 14+
• Play Time: 15-20 minutes
• Number of Players: 2 – 6
• Mechanics – Card Drafting and card placement.
• Difficulty – Easy

The beautifully illustrated cards include wolves, bears, rabbits, streams, meadows, and so on. Depending on the card you choose, you place your cards in a grid in relation to each other and gain points. There’s a players’ guide to assist with your plays.

This is a card drafting game. This means you pick a card from the community deck and choose one to keep, then they then pass their hand to the left. From this hand, each player selects a single card and places it on a 5 x 4 grid representing their ecosystem. The game only has two rounds, at the end of the second round, all players would have 20 cards in total to create their ecosystem. Start tallying up those points. For added points, you want to build your ecosystem with more diversity, which can get tricky if the other players purposely withhold cards from you.

My kids, 8 and 10, were quick to pick up the mechanics of card drafting since they said it was similar to Sushi Go. Also, totally love the short game time.