Biomes of Nilgiris is the exciting upcoming from Indian game company Bluencore (or possibly BluEncore—they seem unsure of the uppercasing themselves!), due for release in early 2026. Designed by Sidhant Chand and Shelly Sinha, Bluencore’s founder, it immerses players in the rich natural diversity of southern India’s mountainous Nilgiri region. Shelly says Biomes ‘marks the beginning of a series of games designed to educate and raise awareness about biodiversity and conservation across various ecosystems in India. I envision our board games as catalysts for change, leveraging their unique power to drive awareness and behavioural change & contributing to cultural appreciation and community building.’
Biomes is a fairly light map-building game for 1–4 players, age 14 and up, with an estimated playing time of 60–90 minutes. In the game, players take on roles such as a photographer or a forest ranger to explore Nilgiris, discovering the many plant and animal species of the area, and performing a range of conservation-related tasks.
The game box contains place cards (biomes, points of interest and field stations—technically all called biome cards, but I’ll use separate names here for ease of explanation), gorgeously illustrated plant and animal ‘species cards,’ some rather less attractive ‘equipment cards,’ 4 player boards and associated character pawns (the characters have individual special abilities, such as gaining additional tokens or free movement), a tonne of various types of token, a main board, and a few other specialised cards.
The main board doesn’t actually provide much function, serving as a resting place for cards to be drawn and the score and sustainability tracks. Most of the interesting stuff happens in a dynamic map composed of the place cards, which grows and changes as players take actions. What follows is a very brief summary of the game, leaving out many details—there’s much more information on the game’s KickStarter page.
Place cards provide players with one of two benefits: first, players can perform the ‘journal’ action, which gains one of the type of token indicated at the top right of the card (e.g., the green ‘botany’ one top right card in the image shown); second, if it’s a biome card, they can ‘conserve’ the area by paying the set of tokens at the bottom of the card to gain scoring points, and depending on the card, sustainability points (in the card mentioned, three tokens, ‘fieldwork,’ ‘photography,’ ‘communication,’ will grant you four points; if it’s a field station card (bottom of the image above), the second option is instead to ‘study’ which converts journaled tokens into ones that can be spent and grants the player an extra card into their hand. Some cards are ‘points of interest’ which offer an immediate scoring benefit when revealed, but do not provide journaling, studying or conservation options.
Species cards are collected in the player’s hand and can be revealed via the ‘discover’ action when the player’s token is on a matching biome (e.g., the blue ‘moist deciduous’ icon on the top right of the kingfisher card means it can be discovered when the player is on a biome card with the matching icon on its top left – a very small nit-pick is the inconsistency on icon placement across card types). After a species card has been revealed, it too is available for subsequent conservation – like biome cards, you pay the tokens indicated at the bottom to move up the score track.
Equipment cards are similarly collected and played, providing instant or ongoing benefits (such as reducing the cost of some actions or providing additional actions).
On each turn, players take three actions, one of which must be move, from the following seven options:
- explore—add a place card face down to the map with a money token on top;
- travel—move to an adjacent card, and if that card is face down, it is revealed and the player takes the money;
- journal—if the place card containing your pawn shows one, gain a token of the appropriate type into the journal area of the player card;
- study—only possible within a field station, move tokens on the journal into your supply, so they can be used for payment, and take either a species or an equipment into your hand;
- equip—play an equipment card from your hand;
- discover—play a wildlife card from your hand;
- conserve—gain points by paying the conservation cost of played wildlife or biomes using resources in your supply.
As mentioned, conservation actions gain points, and some cards offer points when revealed. Once a player has reached 49 points on the scoring track, the game end is triggered. Players’ final scores also take into account where they are on the sustainability track and objectives selected at the start of the game.
A couple of small expansions will be available at or soon after release. One provides six ‘missions’ inspired by real-life situations, such as tackling poachers or invasive species, and another adds additional types of animal along with two more missions. A card game variant is also coming.
Final Words
A couple of other games came to mind as I was thinking about this one: Ark Nova has a similar conservation-ish feel about it, and equally beautiful artwork. However, it’s a much heavier game, so I think Biomes will have a wider appeal.
The second game that jumped out at me is Life of the Amazonia. Biomes and Amazonia use very different game mechanics but have a similar complexity, though Biomes feels more grounded and concrete in its theming. I think Biomes is the better presented of the two games, though Amazonia’s meeples are rather cute. I reckon there’s space for both in the collections of nature game fans.
As a game from and about India, this makes a refreshing change from all the games based on North American or African wildlife, and it doesn’t hurt at all that the artwork is stunning (well, apart from the equipment cards). Gameplay is straightforward, but involves enough strategic decision making to be interesting. I also like how real-world situations have been brought into the game in the form of some of the expansion missions.
One criticism I have is that the large, sprawling map built from cards (as opposed to chunky tiles) is fragile and easily jogged.
Additionally, the gameplay feels a little flat to me: while strategically growing the map and gaining cards and points is very satisfying, there’s not a huge amount of tension or player interaction without the expansions’ missions—you’re racing to get choice cards and biome benefits before others grab them, and that’s about it.
If you want to check out the game before release, a beta version is available on Board Game Arena. And if you’d like to find out more about the region the game’s set in, Nilgiris: A Shared Wilderness could be worth tracking down.
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 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts. 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.
