EcoLogic: Europe, designed and published by Borys Binkowski is landing soon. Borys describes himself as ‘a blend of a nerd and a wild man’ and says he ‘won’t rest until he knows everything about everything,’ and I think that shows in the attention he’d given to this game.
At time of writing, the second iteration of the game (plus a new expansion) is live on Gamefound, following on from a successful first version, published in early 2025. The fact the second edition is coming so soon is surely indicative of the popularity of the game, or maybe Borys’ initial print run of 1,000+ was overly cautious—whatever the reason, I definitely welcome the opportunity to snag a copy! Besides the new expansion, there have been tweaks to the rules to smooth some aspects of gameplay and corrections to some of the cards.
What is it?
EcoLogic is a nature-based tableau building game for 1–7 players, age 10+, with an estimated playing time of 90–120 minutes, though there’s also an ‘express mode’ with simplified rules, estimated at 40 minutes to play. The game offers two different solo modes, ‘solitaire’ (more or less playing the standard game, with drafting replaced by simply drawing new cards) and ‘automa’ (almost like playing two hands simultaneously with some opponent actions being chosen randomly).
The rule book says: ‘The EcoLogic game shows the richness of nature and the connections between its elements. Both the content and mechanics of the game are designed to serve this purpose. In the game, you’ll find almost 400 different cards representing the kingdom of plants, fungi, and animals from the European temperate forest zone, stretching from France to Ukraine. These cards are placed in 5 different habitats, together forming a complex ecosystem where biomass tokens are moved between them, thus creating food chains.’ Note that the rule book is for the base game: the expansions add more cards and habitats.
In practice this means placing cards representing various species into matching habitats and running chains of food consumption and growth by adding tokens to cards which produce biomass, then flowing them along to plants and animals which consume the organisms on those cards.
How to Play
To begin with, each player selects four habitat boards from the available options and is given eight species cards.
The game is played over four seasons, each season consisting of a beginning phase, habitation, and end. In the beginning phase (skipped on the first season, since no cards have been placed into habitats yet), plants and lichen produce biomass, i.e., add a season-specific number of biomass tokens to each plant card; then fungi and animals feed on those plants, transferring the tokens along the chain. If there’s insufficient food for any particular card, it ‘dies’ and is discarded.
Habitation comprises four steps which are repeated as many times as players want or are able to:
· Exchange—optionally exchange cards or biomass tokens for other cards or tokens, as determined by season-specific rules (e.g., in spring you can discard one card in your hand to draw another, whereas in winter you have to discard two for a new one).
· Playing a card—place a card into a matching habitat; a plant or lichen species will start producing biomass, i.e., you add the number of biomass tokens to the card appropriate to the season; animal and fungi cards start consuming biomass as soon as they’re placed, so you need to ensure that enough exists on already placed cards to satisfy that, and move the relevant tokens from the food organism to the consuming one (similar to what happens in the beginning phase).
· Preparing for transfer—choose two cards in your hand to give to the player on your left (spring and autumn) or right (summer and winter).
· Transferring—everyone picks up the cards passed to them at the same time.
I’ve omitted various card-specific actions and small details for the sake of brevity.
The end phase, in all seasons but winter, is when decay happens, such that some biomass is converted to ‘remains tokens’ (which are a food for some species) and some is discarded. In winter, instead, the game ends and final scores are calculated based on the number of different species each player has along with bonus values on some specific cards.
Impressions and comparisons
The first thing that struck me about this game is the artwork—it’s one of the prettiest games I’ve seen. It also appeals to me as because it’s Euro-centric; so many games focus on African or American nature. (I’d love European versions of Cascadia or Parks if the relevant publishers are reading!)
The game mechanics have a logic thoroughly based in nature: butterflies live off flowers, and birds include butterflies in what they eat, while some mammals prey on birds (among other things), and mozzies chow down on a nice bit of mammalian blood. I’ve seen EcoLogic described as ‘playing an encyclopaedia.’
While most of the time everyone is working on their own board (which means that game time isn’t affected much by the number of players), the card transfer stage provides a strategic opportunity for interaction between players. Borys says Wingspan was one of his inspirations for the game, but he wanted a game featuring many more species and the interactions between them. The boards and cards look similar (both games having those charmingly informative little facts printed on their cards), and there is some theme overlap, but beyond that, the games are very different. Biome, on the other hand, is a comparable tableau game: it has lots of nicely illustrated animal and plant species to be played into different habitats, with season-specific action modifications, and a feeding phase where critters die if there’s insufficient food. In both games, interactions between cards are generally limited by habitat, but there are mechanisms which straddle habitat types in interesting ways. Biome is a bit more bloodthirsty than EcoLogic because it’s only baby animals that die through starvation or are eaten by predators – how could they!? Differences between the games include Biome having distinct food types rather than generic biomass, but there’s no flow of biomass between organisms; card layout matters in Biome as an animal needs to be beside particular plants in order to reproduce, whereas Ecologic’s cards can be anywhere within their habitat (though it’s probably easier to keep the biomass flowing in one direction rather than jumping back and forth). Biome replaces EcoLogic’s card drafting with actions that affect other players (such as those nasty baby-eating predators). Is one better than the other? Biome is more colourful, but feels more ‘static’ – the flow of nutrients between organisms makes EcoLogic seem more alive. I think there’s room for both (Wingspan, too) in any game collection.
Final Words
This is a beautiful looking game and the rules are fairly easy to pick up. I like the whole ecosystem flow mechanism, so unlike many games where you only have to consider a single something-eats-something step at a time. The strategy involved in making sure all organisms on the board survive gives players plenty of brain exercise, and the card drafting mechanism adds a nice frisson of tension.
You can find more details on EcoLogic: Europe’s Gamefound page.
Note: this was based on preview material – the final game may differ in some details.
About the author:
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
