Ecosystem – A Family Card Game about Animals, Habitats, Biodiversity

We received this game as a gift and we were all excited to open it (2 adults and kids ages 5, 8 and 10). The artwork is gorgeous and engaging, and the concept of the game is fairly intuitive (drafting a card and placing it in front of you where the animal/landform would work best in the ecosystem). You eventually make a 4×5 grid as you draft and place the cards until you have your ecosystem complete. You then score points based on favorable ecosystem setups (i.e. trout and dragonflies next to streams, bees next to meadows, etc.) The game plays fairly quickly (about 15 minutes) and allows up to 6 players, which is nice for larger families. Every game feels different because there are so many variations for how to display your grid.This game was reminiscent of Sushi Go in terms of drafting and passing your hand. Some of the point scoring felt similar as well (the scoring of wolves in Ecosystem feels like the way to score puddings in Sushi Go). The similarity helped us understand how to play the game better, but the two games feel very different as you play. For one thing, the theme of animals in an ecosystem is way more appealing and relevant to us than a game about sushi. The pictures on the cards were beautiful to look at, and there was a sense of pride and ownership as you drafted cards and created your own ecosystem. The end grid result is also lovely to look at, and our kids were excited to compete for the longest stream or the biggest wolf pack. This game is definitely a winner and will go into our game play rotation!A few tips we found helpful:- Put the cards in a holder for younger kids. This makes it easier to pass and easier for younger kids to easily pick a card after each pass.- Even though it says 10 , our 5 year old picked up on the game fairly quickly (though we do play board games often as a family). Some ways to modify the game for younger kids might be to take a few types of animals out of the game or don’t give negative points for ecosystem gaps at the end of the game.- Scoring can take a long time, and young kids will lose interest during this phase of the game (comes at the end after your grid is made). To keep kids engaged, I had my 8 and 10 year old add up everyone’s scores (they were motivated to know who won, and we got some bonus math practice in) while the 5 year old helped clean up the cards.- While scoring, you need to know which cards did not score any points. You can’t immediately remove them because they may affect scoring for other cards. It can be hard to remember which cards didn’t score, so we simply placed some kind of marker on those cards (gems, buttons, etc.) and at the end of the game, it was really easy to see your ecosystem gaps.- If playing with kids, score one animal at a time. Go around and have everyone tally their bears (and mark their ecosystem gaps as suggested above), then their bees, and so on.