- Designer: Daniel Dávalos, Steve Schlepphorst, Matt Simpson
- Artists: Mesa Schumacher, Martyna Szpil
- Publisher: Genius Games
- Players: 1 – 6
What will you be doing?
You will be managing a savanna ecosystem, respecting the symbiotic relationships between landscape and wildlife.
How does it play?
Ecosystem: Savanna is a small box drafting game in which players build a 5 x 4 tableau of cards. Each turn, players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and place it in their tableau before passing their hand to the player next to them.
The cards depict various habitats and animals of the savanna ecosystem, and at the end of the game each type of card scores according to its own unique criteria. For example, watering holes score points for having multiple animals next to them, while savanna score more points if they are chained together.
Certain ‘predator’ cards allow ‘prey’ cards like zebra to be flipped over, which can then score further points (for example vultures score points for flipped cards vertically beneath them).
Simple rules then, but the different scoring criteria can be a bit hard to remember in the first few plays, so having a player reference for every player is appreciated.
My Thoughts
I really enjoy Ecosystem:Savanna. As with most drafting games, I find the multiplayer game works best with 3 or more players. The drafting is simple and breezy – the meat of the game is more about where you place your cards than in which cards you choose, so you rarely become frustrated with the hands you are given.
The spatial puzzle it presents is always engaging. The scoring is simple enough to be able to remember while you play, but the interactions between the scoring elements leads to some difficult decisions, as each card placed can help (or ruin) multiple scoring elements at once.
I think the variety in scoring is well designed. Trying to line up cheetahs on a diagonal with antelope (while not putting them beside an elephant or break up what could otherwise be a large savanna) requires some mental spatial juggling reminiscent of that needed in Tiny Towns. It is not as unforgiving as that game though, and the quick play time and accessible theme and artwork make this a great filler game for families or gamers.
The Solo Mode
The solo system works well. You play your game as normal but the cards you discard are given to your ‘opponent’ who builds them into a tableau in a linear fashion.
Building a separate tableau for your opponent in such a way that it scores as little as possible at first seems trivially easy – you can easily make it score zero points for most categories. But your opponents tableau isn’t directly competing with yours – it is simply a mechanism through which to force decisions as to what to discard from your own hand and because the win condition is based on beating your opponent by X number of points, every single point you allow your opponent to score matters.
This makes the solo experience subtly different to the multiplayer experience but in my opinion no less enjoyable.
For the solo player, Ecosystem: Savanna has just the right amount of crunch for when you don’t have the time or energy to play anything too demanding but still want to feel the cogs in your brain whirring.
