I am loving all the games focused on nature in board games and was so excited to get to try Biomos from NorthStar Game Studio. Designed by Gricha German and illustrated by Baptiste Perez, Biomos is a gorgeous drafting game for players of all ages.
Create planets filled with stunning landscapes! Easy-to-learn, fun, and an addictive puzzle, players terraform their planet using terrain tiles and race to complete biome cards, representing new life on the planet. Featuring 3 different game modes with one ambitious goal: Develop the most biodiverse planet!
What’s in the box?
Biomos comes with 60 terrain coins (12 each of ocean, desert, forest, mountain, glacier), 40 biome cards (30 basic, 10 giant), 1 black hole card, four planet boards, and a pouch to hold all the pieces. The art on Biomos is so pretty! I loved seeing all the different locations and the terrain tiles were made of quality chitboard and perfectly fit in the planet boards.
I particularly loved the art of the different biomes. All of them are real! You can learn more about all of them at Subverti’s (original publisher) website.
How’s it play?
Gameplay in Biomos is incredibly simple, yet provides enough challenge to be fun and competitive. Players each start with a planet board which is double sided. One side offers bonus points at the end of the game for having more of a certain kind of terrain and 3 points per terrain as the moon. The other side, the family side, only offers the 3 points per terrain. Four giant biome and four basic biome cards are placed on the table between the players. The remaining giant biome cards are returned to the box, but the basic biome cards can be drawn to refill the cards as the game progresses.
Players take turns picking one of five terrain tokens and placing it into the free space of the planet board. You can make space for your tokens by sliding existing terrain tokens to the left or right, but you cannot pick up existing token tiles in your board. The first time my friend and I played, we thought we could only move things down because gravity…moves things down. So that actually made the game more challenging, and we might keep playing it that way, but if you don’t, you can definitely score in high numbers.
At the end of the turn, if you’ve placed terrain tokens in a pattern that matches one of the biome cards, you can claim it for scoring at the end of the game. After five tokens are removed, another five are placed on the table. The game continues until all players have filled their player boards, including the moon (into the smaller space on the board). Forming the moon is required since within the game’s story, not having one means the weather and climate on your planet will have major issues.
During turns, players can also perform one of four planetary events if they want to change one of their terrain tokens to fill a pattern. For example, you can freeze an ocean if it is adjacent to a mountain and replace the ocean with a glacier. There is no way to create an ocean or mountain, however.
The family mode removes this element of the game and there are two fewer spaces to fill in.
Biomos also has a fun solo mode where you play against the Black Hole and have to get more points than the Black Hole does. You take 3 terrain tokens at random from the pouch, place 1 in your board, and the others into the Black Hole Card. If biome cards are completed for you or the Black Hole, you take it or put it with the Black Hole, which has now “consumed” the biome. Your goal is to score more than the Black Hole or you’ve lost your planet!
The verdict?
Biomos is one of those rare games where I really don’t have anything to critique! It’s beautiful, easy to learn, fun to play, involves enough challenge for it to be worth playing, and games go quickly. Setup is similarly quick, and so is putting everything back in the box. A rare, complete 10 out of 10 for me! I know I’ll be playing it a lot, and if I take games with me somewhere to play, this is one that’s going to go with me.
You can grab a copy for $29.99 directly from NorthStar or at your FLGS!
Images and review copy courtesy of Northstar Game Studio
Have strong thoughts about this piece you need to share? Or maybe there’s something else on your mind you’re wanting to talk about with fellow Fandomentals? Head on over to our Community server to join in the conversation!