Review

 

Welcome to the underwater Cosmos

 

OZEANE

 

Evolution under Water

 

Evolution is a thrilling topic, that fortunately is picked up again and again by board games. A very well-designed and very harmonious development game on the topic is available since five years under the name of the genre, Evolution. In 2017 the topic was picked up again by the publishers in the sequel called Evolution: Der Einstieg / The Beginning, a slimmed-down but nonetheless equally entertaining variant of the original game. Now game evolution has taken another step, has adapted the concept and transferred it to another environment.

 

„Wow, was exquisitely designed colorful cards!“ is the spontaneous reaction upon opening a box that promises such a wow effect. And the overall design also suits the topic: Population markers in Reef design, yes, Nemo is there as well, nice Reef cardboard, only the rules would be given a „there is room for more” or “ confusing” remark - but get through it, it pays off! Rather hesitantly, we send out first species into the reef, for a start equipped with one special ability which is meant to help the species to endure through the coming ages and to not die out. But which trait should I choose) “Filter Feeding” and therefore take up food, lots of food, peacefully and remindful of a Blue Whale, and with it enlarge population figures of the species? “Parasitic” and relieve the neighboring species of a few of their population markers or even choose “Apex Predator” and attack other species? Provided of course, that neither protection functions like swarm or transparency are active nor the defense values are too high, which at the moment excludes Inking. If convenient, the Predator eats through the population, to the delight of Shark Cleaners, who may - in analogy and comparison to Parasites - may join the feeding.

 

Aging is the key!

 

If you are thinking of „eat and be eaten“, you only partially correct because total extinction is not happening like that. Extinction only happens if a population cannot age anymore, that is, has no population marker to show after feeding. In that case, the species disappears without further ado from the map, sorry, ocean landscape, and with it their trait cards. Bitter and unfortunate but not fatal. So,  eat something quickly to avoid extinction and thus keep scoring points, one for each of your own species, whereby the size of the species does not matter! Points optimizers might be encouraged to go for a broad variety of species, but that ambition is curbed by the restriction of being only able to let one species eat - parasites are indicated.  

 

The Cambrian Explosion

 

begins Phase two in the game; it happens when the reef has been cleaned of food and - as it happens without mercy in the fishing industry - the source of food has to be switched to the deep sea. Additional deep see trait cards come into the ocean fray, events are exercising influence and you only play cards from now on, which speeds up the game - good, because you are familiar with the game now and have placed yourself well. A plethora of 89 (!) different traits have been dreamed up and marvelously illustrated, and the rules even list their creators. All those traits are not perfectly balanced and fine-tuned, but definitely the salt in the ocean soup. They intensive the chance and interaction element and the consistency of planning is diluted. All gets more extreme, as illustrated by cards like “The Kraken” which allows two additional attacks with an enormous attack value, sometimes it even gets exulted, if you take “Super Brain”; Gene Transfer” or Cthulhu Blood Sucker” for examples, which, in a way, should maybe be considered to be a separate “Trash” expansion. It might be a valid recommendation to assemble various deep see decks, albeit after a few games to not endanger the surprise effects, adapted to your idea of how the game flow should work.

 

It does not take long, however, after that Cambrian Explosion, until the last food reserves have gone, which triggers a usually intense brain-racking final round, in which, at the latest, eating is especially important to increase your population as population numbers are important for scoring.

At that point, it is important not to fall into the over-populating trap und not to be reduced to half the maximum population due to having received one fish too much. Chance, confusing situations and potentially intense interaction can scramble the scoring, often in favor of the last player who must relinquish starting bonus points (unfortunately not an adequate means of control), but does not have to take any risks. Not their cup of tea for planning freaks, but fun and fancy for players who want to have fun.

 

Ozeane is a fantastically beautifully designed, card based game, a complex development game, especially in the fully-developed stage, for ambitious players of family games or for experienced players, providing intense ambience for players from teen age up, tendency towards adults. Not always easy to handle and easy to adhere to the rules, and it can degenerate to brain-racking sometimes, but that should not happen too often, because due to the high interaction and luck-of-the draw a lot of unforeseen things can happen, quite often quite fundamental ones. Thrilling and entertaining, just like evolution itself.

 

Thomas Bareder

 

Players: 2-6

Age: 14+

Time: 90+

Designer: Nick Bentley, Dominique Crapuchettes, Ben Goldman, Brian O'Neill

Artist: Ben Goldman, Catherine Hamilton, Guillaume Cucos & Team

Price: ca. 55 Euro

Publisher: Schwerkraft Verlag 2020

Web: www.schwerkraft-verlag.de

Genre: Development, optimization 

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en

In-game text: yes

 

Comments:

Extremely beautiful components

Topic nicely implemented

Optimization mechanisms

Lots of ambience

 

Compares to:

Evolution and variants

 

Other editions:

Kickstarter collector’s edition

 

My rating: 6

 

Thomas Bareder:

The predecessor Evolution recommends itself rather for planning-loving strategists and tacticians; oceans should appeal more to trait-combination-optimizers and trash-fun players with a penchant for challenges.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0