Ever wanted to play a biology-themed game without all that confusing biology? “BIOTIX” is what you’ll want to play as your sole goal is to get as many different types of BIOTIX onto your petri dish card as possible at the end of a day. You’ll have to be careful though…your petri dish can only handle so many BIOTIX of a particular color. Going over causes a bio-reaction, the effects of which change depending on the color. You earn points for the BIOTIX still on your petri dish when the day ends and the player with the most points after three days, wins. Special thanks to Curt Covert from Smirk and Dagger Games for providing me with a press copy for review purposes.
Due to medical issues I opted to cover the rules and gameplay in a video which I posted at the end of this article. As far as a review goes, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It plays very quickly (20-30 minutes) and still leaves players with a lot to think about. When drawing BIOTIX on your turn, for example, you can place them on ANY petri dish you want. See your opponent maxed out on their blue BIOTIX? Why not give them one when you draw it…good things are bound to happen, honestly! Actually, in that case, your opponent would be forced to give 1 blue BIOTIX (called Migratory BIOTIX) to each player and trash the rest in the petri dish. Each BIOTIX has a different effect and point value…oftentimes the colored BIOTIX that offer the most points (called their intrinsic value)at the end of the day are the most volatile.
I do like the inclusion of “The Eureka Paradox”, which allows a player that is 20 points or more behind the leader an attempt to catch up. At the end of the second day, said player will secretly write a BIOTIX color along with a number from 1-3. If they meet that goal at the end of the third day, they earn 30 points to their score (25 in a five player game). There are also black (aggressive BIOTIX) for an advanced game…essentially they act as wilds that could against your score at the end of the day UNLESS you have only ALL black BIOTIX in your petri dish. In that case, each black BIOTIX is worth 5 points instead of -2.
My only real gripe with the game is the inclusion of stickers. I know, that not a bad thing…but there are so many of them and they require a bit of dexterity and grace to put on the meeples. Granted, you don’t HAVE to use the stickers, but they do add personality to the game. The rulebook was also a tad confusing…usually I see terms like “setup” and “gameplay”…instead, the rulebook calls them “methods” and “procedure” to keep with the scientific theme. Again, this is a MINOR gripe and does not break the game. I just found it different and it messed with my OCD ever so slightly.
“BIOTIX” is an awesome little biology game, period. It’s not meant to be educational…rather, it just encourages you to blow up your opponent’s petri dish so that they have to discard BIOTIX and by extension, points. I enjoyed the theme, the quality of the components, and the gameplay. It’s an easy recommend for family game night as it supports up to five players. It’s also fairly cheap on Amazon right now as of the date of this posting (about $15-20), go search for it using my Amazon sidebar to help support my website.
Final Verdict: 9/10
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Thanks for the review. It looks cool. But take note… this is biology, not chemistry 🙂
Nice catch, fixed!
Thanks for the review! A few notes of clarification. “Give away” definitely means to other players. Also, when the timer comes out, the other BIOTIX is not placed. Take a score tally of the dishes as they currently exist. Black Aggressive BIOTIX are not so much ‘wild’ as they are a cancer cell that replaces a BIOTIX already on a player’s dish. This tends to be negative, so most people seek to give these away – unless trying to fill ones dish with them to make them worth 5 points instead of minus 2. Reds are always good to take – so you can steal any two you want from other players.
Thanks for the clarification! 🙂