Ecosystem

About this board game

Ecosystem is a card-drafting game for 2–6 players that takes about 20 minutes to play. Each player selects cards and places them into a personal grid, gradually creating an ecosystem from the available wildlife and landscape cards.

Over the course of the game, every player builds an ecosystem containing twenty cards. With eleven types of cards included, each choice can affect how the cards around it score. The aim is not simply to collect one kind of card, but to create a diverse arrangement in which different parts of the ecosystem support one another.

• Bears score when placed next to bees and trout.
• Trout score when placed next to streams and dragonflies.
• Streams are compared at the end of the game, with the player who has the largest stream earning points.

Because cards are drafted and then added to a grid, placement matters throughout the game. A card may be valuable on its own, but its position can also help neighboring cards score. Watching the developing layouts and choosing cards that fit your growing environment are central to each turn.

At the end of the game, the completed grids are scored according to the relationships among their cards and the relevant comparisons. Don’t forget to diversify: a well-balanced ecosystem can make the most of several scoring connections.

Released in 2019, Ecosystem offers a compact way to explore card drafting, spatial arrangement, and interconnected scoring. With room for up to six players and a short play time, it presents the challenge of building a complete natural system in just twenty cards.