Biomos review — Create your world

Biomos is an extremely simple board game that can become more complex if you play it with a group of friends. For most of my time with this game, I spent it playing the solo mode and variants of that solo mode. But, I got a few group games in and am happy to say that I am now obsessed with nature games.

The Game

Biomos is a game where you’re tasked with building a world that can sustain life. This goal manifests itself as creating a planet that has the most points. This game is played in rounds, even when you’re playing solo.

The gameplay loop is extremely simple, and it made learning the game exceptionally easy. When I opened the box the day I got it I only needed 30 minutes to get the rules down and play. I have since played Biomos nearly every morning: The setup of the game makes it easy to unpack in under 5 minutes. As you play the game, you’ll be selecting a terrain token and placing it down, followed by taking two optional actions. You can perform a Planetary event or complete a Biome card. Planetary events let you do things like freezing an Ocean. If you have an Ocean adjacent to a Mountain you can replace the Ocean with a Glacier. Completing a biome consists of you getting points if you have the exact pattern of terrain pieces available. The game ends when the last player completes their Planet Board and after that; the points are tallied.

Family Mode

Family Mode is an optional, shorter way to play the game that I ran through once. It’s not anything special, but it also doesn’t take anything away from the base game. It’s advertised as being for those who are newer to the game. However, I had no issues jumping in with the base set of rules.

The rulebook doesn’t introduce Family Mode until page 12 and if the game designers really intended for this mode to be for those who are newer to the game; I feel like it should’ve been brought up sooner. On the plus side, the rulebook is only 19 pages, so everything is still lightweight.

Solo Mode

I love the solo mode so much, it’s extremely well done and very fluid. I especially appreciate that the solo rules are not too far apart from the normal rules of the game. Meaning, you can use the rules at the start of the book to set up solo mode. During solo mode, you’re racing against a black hole to finish your biomes: I enjoyed this approach a lot because it makes the game go by much faster. The biggest thing going for solo mode is how well-written the rules are. Everything is as concise as it needs to be to get the point across. I usually steer clear of lightweight games because the instructions can be hit or miss, but this game is an exception to my rule and really showed me how much potential a lightweight game can have.

In the Box

Inside the box, you get 60 terrain tokens, 30 basic biomes, 9 giant biomes, 1 black hole, and 4 planet boards. As a bonus, they also included a cosmic pouch, a bag that holds all the terrain tokens that you’ll be drawing from.

The box itself has a sturdy construction and the items inside are of high quality. The cards are not going to fall apart on you and the terrain tokens are wicked solid. As I play more board games, my appreciation for well-built games increases.

Thinking outside of the box for a second

Biomos is extremely easy to teach. I was able to get a new player started in about 15 minutes and we had a fantastic time in our first game. I have played with up to 4 players and nothing changes about the difficulty of Biomos. I appreciate that because it keeps the entry-level feel.

There is also something to be said for how small the box is: Arkham Horror and Marvel Champions were my introduction to board games and they have pretty large boxes, especially if you want to use the expansions. Biomos is extremely portable and easy to pack up and take out. It really only takes 5 minutes tops to set up after you do it for the first time.

As much as I love this game, though, there is something to be said about how lucky you have to be to win, even in solo mode. The randomness can be fun for a while but quickly becomes increasingly frustrating. I enjoy trying to race the black hole in single-player essentially, but dealing with it becomes a touch too frustrating after I can only do it once a day.

Final Thoughts

Biomos is my latest obsession, I adore this game so much I bought a second copy. There is something extremely relaxing about this game, something that drives me to play each morning. Biomos at its core is extremely simple, but as you play, the potential for complexity shows its face. I simply adore the design and artwork for this game and I can’t wait to jump back in each day for a quick play through.

The only aspect of this game that gets old is the randomness. Even when playing in a complete group of 4, the randomness becomes frustrating, and it prevents Biomos from being fun for multiple play-throughs.

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