Science 6.03.2020

SCIENCE sciencemag.org 6 MARCH 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6482 1081

CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): GUILLAUME DUCOS; CATHERINE HAMILTON

N

orth Star Games’ new board game

Oceans simulates marine evolution,

modeling the fierce struggle for exis-

tence among competing species in an

“eat or be eaten” environment. It does

this by enabling players to create spe-

cies whose feeding strategies are dictated

by one of 12 trait cards. “Filter feeders,”

for example, forage exclusively from the

fish tokens in the game’s reef zone. “Apex

predators,” on the other hand, must suc-

cessfully attack other players’ species. Play-

ers can react with defensive behaviors, such

as “inking” and “schooling,” which, in turn,

create pressure on other players to pro-

duce predators with ever-stronger attacks,

in a coevolutionary arms race. The food

tokens a player earns from feeding attempts

are added to the individual board of each

species and are eventually converted into

the final points that determine victory at

the game’s conclusion.

Oceans is the latest addition to the highly

praised North Star Games Evolution series

( 1 – 3 ). Veterans of the earlier games in that

series will recognize Catherine Hamilton’s

mesmerizing illustrations on the box and

on the game’s main (“surface”) deck of

cards. Her vibrant watercolors

simultaneously capture the el-

egance of real species’ forms

while leaving room for players’

imaginations to complete the

canvas of their new creations.

The “deep” deck, however,

which comprises 89 unique

abilities, includes designs from

other talented artists, lend-

ing to their distinctive feel.

The game preserves one of the

key elements of its predecessors,

illustrating trade-offs associated

with certain feeding strategies.

Food tokens are limited, and either play-

ers must keep the reef well stocked, or spe-

cies that feed from the reef must eventually

adapt to life in deeper habitats. But Oceans

really ups the ante when it comes to species

and player interactions.

The game cleverly incorporates a host of

traits that create symbiotic relationships

between and among players’ species. For

instance, “parasitic” creatures leech food to-

kens from adjacent species, whereas “shark

cleaners” gain tokens when a large attack

has been made. A single feeding event can

trigger a cascade of effects among a spe-

cies’s symbionts, highlighting the intercon-

nectedness of life in such ecosystems and

illustrating the vital role of keystone spe-

cies. Abrupt changes to these species send

reverberations across the community and

spell extinction for those that cannot evolve

fast enough. Players are also discouraged

from allowing their species to indulge in

unbridled feeding frenzies: Those that gain

too many fish tokens overpopulate, and

their numbers collapse by half.

Every game of Oceans features an event

known as the Cambrian Explosion, named

for the period in Earth’s history characterized

by rapid speciation rates and a burst of mor-

phological innovation. Here, players use dou-

ble the amount of trait cards per turn, thus

hastening the evolutionary turnover of traits.

This second half of the game also requires

species to consume more food per round to

survive, intensifying the game’s tempo.

While it is possible to play the game using

only the 12 surface trait cards, the game gets

really weird (in a good way) if players choose

to add in the cards from the deep deck after

the Cambrian Explosion. This deck features

powerful and mysterious cards that lean into

science fiction and embrace the unknown

lurking in our thalassic depths, as deep-

sea krakens, leviathans, and behemoths

rear their heads. It also features a range of

real, magnificent, and game-changing traits

found in the deep sea, such as

intelligence, bioluminescence,

and coprophagia (yes, the game

goes there). It is worth not-

ing that gentle giants can also

evolve with great success, lest

it seem as though the game is

biased toward aggressive strate-

gies at this phase.

Oceans invites players to mar-

vel at the rich diversity of ocean

life, from the vivacious reef to

the mysterious ocean depths.

Building on the prior successes

of the series, it packages all this

into a fast-paced and dynamic strategy game

with high replay value. j

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. S. West, Nature 528 , 192 (2015).


2. A. Chuang, Science 355 , 587 (2017).


3. M. R. Muell et al., Evolution 10.1111/evo.13924 (2020).

10.1126/science.aba9172

Increasingly powerful beasts emerge

from Oceans’ deeper waters.

(^1) Department of Psychology and Department of Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville,
TN 37996, USA.^2 New Mexico Consortium, Los Alamos, NM
87544, USA. Email: [email protected]
Oceans
Nick Bentley,
Dominic Crapuchettes,
Ben Goldman, and
Brian O’Neill
North Star Games, 2020.
EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY
An underwater arms race drives a vibrant new game
By Angela Chuang^1 and^ Orlando Schwery^2
Evolution makes a splash
BOOKS et al.
Published by AAAS