I am loving All the games revolved around nature in board games and I was so excited to try it out Biomos by NorthStar Game Studio. Designed by Gricha German and illustrated by Baptiste Perez, Biomos is a beautiful drafting game for players of all ages.
Create planets filled with stunning landscapes! The game is easy to learn, fun and an addictive puzzle. Players design their planet using terrain tiles and try to complete biome cards that represent new life on the planet. There are 3 different game modes with one ambitious goal: develop the planet with the most biodiversity!
What’s in the box?
Biomos comes with 60 terrain coins (12 each for ocean, desert, forest, mountain, glacier), 40 biome cards (30 basic and 10 giant biome cards), 1 black hole card, four planet boards and a bag to store all the pieces. The art on Biomos is so pretty! I loved seeing all the different locations and the terrain tiles were made from high quality chipboard and fit perfectly into the planet boards.
I especially liked the artwork of the different biomes. They are all real! You can find out more about them all on the Subverti (original publisher) website.
How does it play?
Gameplay in Biomos is incredibly simple, but still offers enough challenge to be fun and competitive. Each player starts with a double-sided planet board. One side offers bonus points at the end of the game for more terrain of a certain type, and 3 points per terrain such as the moon. The other side, the family side, offers only the 3 points per terrain. Four giant biome and four basic biome cards are placed on the table between players. The remaining giant biome cards are returned to the box, but the basic biome cards can be drawn to replenish the cards as the game progresses.
Players take turns choosing one of five terrain markers and placing it on the vacant space on the planet board. You can make space for your markers by sliding existing terrain markers left or right, but you can’t pick up existing marker tiles on your board. When my friend and I first played, we thought we could only move things downwards because gravity… moves things downwards. So that actually made the game more challenging and we may continue to play it that way, but if you don’t do that, you can definitely score a lot of points.
At the end of the turn, if you have placed terrain markers in a pattern that matches one of the biome cards, you can claim them for scoring at the end of the game. After five markers are removed, another five are placed on the table. Play continues until all players have filled their player boards, including the moon (in the smaller space on the board). The formation of the moon is necessary because without a moon, there will be major problems with the weather and climate on your planet in the game’s story.
During turns, players can also perform one of four planetary events if they want to change one of their terrain markers to fill a pattern. For example, they can freeze an ocean if it is adjacent to a mountain, replacing the ocean with a glacier. However, there is no way to create an ocean or mountain.
Family mode removes this element from the game and there are two fewer fields to fill.
Biomos also has a fun solo mode where you play against the Black Hole and have to score more points than the Black Hole. You take 3 random terrain markers from the bag, place 1 on your board and the others on the Black Hole card. When biome cards are completed for you or the Black Hole, you take them or place them to the Black Hole, which has now “consumed” the biome. Your goal is to score more points than the Black Hole, otherwise you’ve lost your planet!
The verdict?
Biomos is one of those rare games that I really can’t fault! It’s beautiful, easy to learn, fun, challenging enough to make it worth playing, and the games are quick to complete. Setup is just as quick as packing it back into the box. A rare, full 10 out of 10 for me! I know I’ll be playing it often, and if I’m taking games somewhere to play, this is one I’ll be taking with me.
You can pick up a copy for $29.99 directly from NorthStar or your FLGS!
Images and review copy courtesy of Northstar Game Studio
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