Genotype - Game review

In this review of Genotype: A Mendelian Genetics Game, you'll learn how to play, why dice are not necessarily equivalent to genes, and how a person is like a flower pot. For more details on Genotype, head to the BoardGameGeek game page: boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2...

[@SunfallTE]

I've never been totally sold on any of their game designs, but I love love LOVE that there's a company like Genius Games making these sorts of games. Board games often have themes pasted on, and those themes usually orbit around a tight set of topics (would you perchance like to *trade* in the *Mediterranean*, goodfellow?), but Genius' themes are always deeply integrated with the gameplay, and that gameplay is--as you point out--not just a very weak experience with a bunch of SCIENCE TRIVIA pasted on to make it educational.
Essentially, I would have *killed* (figuratively) to have these sorts of games available when I was an early teen and a huge budding science nerd with not a lot of avenues to explore that. I'm glad people young and old have access to these games. Even if their playstyles aren't always for me, I can deeply appreciate their existence. The closest I got was SolarQuest, which is "really bad Monopoly... IN SPAACE!"; as terrible as it is, I was still fascinated because, y'know, IN SPAACE.
(I can look at the dice drafting in Genotype and think about that last right and immediately know the game's not for me, for example, but still: I love that a Mendelian genetics game exists!)
Thanks for the review/overview.

[@boardgamegeek]

OMG, SolarQuest. I had buried all memories of that item, an excellent example of how not to create a science-based game. -WEM

[@SunfallTE]

@@boardgamegeek Awful. Totally awful. And yet: all those cards had the names of Saturn and Jupiter's moons on them! I was entranced, even as the game rended my soul.