The first 4 billion years of life on Earth.

The Earth has seen dramatic events: lava oceans, a great collision that formed its moon, the filling of the oceans by impact bolides, the riding of continents with plate tectonics. Among these noisy events, life got started, perhaps many times and in many forms. The players, representing “soup ingredients”, must find a sheltered refuge in order to start autocatalytic cycles and accumulate catalysts. Once they achieve templated reproduction, they can share their progress by swapping genetic material or becoming parasites or chimeras. The game ends in the Cambrian Explosion, with the advent of multicellular life and the invasion of the land.

Solitaire, competitive, and cooperative play options. This is the first game in the Bios:Trilogy, being followed by Bios:Megafauna 2 and Bios:Origins 2. The Bios games are linked yet independent.

Contents:

• 60 Cards illustrated by Karim Chakroun
• 16 oversized placards, for bacteria and refugia
• 48 disks representing catalysts, enzymes, and antioxidants
• 64 wooden cubes for manna & chromosomes
• 16 wooden domes for bionts
• 12 six-sided dice, used for autocatalytic and Darwin rolls
• Rules and historical background, 68 pages
• Folding player aid

Players: 1-4
Age: 14+
Playing Time: 1-2 hours
Complexity: high

Another cool game I found on Kickstarter, now available in retail (although from Germany, where Phil Eklund has relocated). Phil designs rich games that thoroughly explore a setting, at the cost of fairly high complexity. As such I wouldn't use this in the regular classroom. If you have a gifted class, or students who want to play it after school, I think they could learn a lot.

You can get a good idea of what Bios:Genesis involves on the Kickstarter page:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/684398802/bios-genesis-2nd-edition-begin-evolve-conquer

Linked on the grade 12 biology page.

Tags: grade 12, biology, game