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I taught chemistry, biology, and physics for a number of years, and many of my students would come into the classroom inclined to dislike science — they found it boring or intimidating or incomprehensible. But, at the same time, they could spout off all sorts of complicated statistics and figures from sci-fi games that they were playing. So I thought, why not design games that were highly engaging and fun that are also accurately themed around hard science concepts?
This approach seems sensible given that the sciences often revolve around systems and laws and repeatable activities that can serve as the heart of a game, something for players to manipulate while subtly — or not so subtly thanks to the inclusion of reference material — learning about the science behind the system.Genius' 2021 release was Genotype: A Mendelian Genetics Game, co-designed by Coveyou, Paul Salomon, and Ian Zang. Mendelian genetics originates from Gregor Mendel, a 19th century monk who cultivated and hybridized thousands of pea plants, which led to the concept of traits within a individual being the result of elements — genes — inherited from that individual's creators.
In the game, you are Mendel's assistants who are validating traits in various pea plants, and the more plants you fully document, the better your score at game's end — although Mendel will probably take all the credit for your work in his presentations on the topic, so don't get too full of yourself.
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The end of a two-player game
As for the flow of the game, Genotype lasts five rounds, and each round consists of an action phase, a dice-drafting phase, and a buying phase. The action phase is carried out via worker placement, with you placing one of your trowels on an available space and doing something:
• Take 2 coins from the treasury.
• Draft plant cards or a tool.
• Lock in first pick for a particular type of die — although the dice haven't yet been rolled — or grab second pick from among all the dice that remain after first picks.
• Alter the parent plants to affect which traits will be available during the drafting phase.
• Research a particular trait or pair of traits to possibly score extra points at game's end.
• Validate one trait on one of your pea plants by covering it.
• Open an extra space for a die this round, which I suppose is you devoting more time for work in your schedule.
• Garden, which consists of drafting a plant or tool card, harvesting your fully validated pea plants, and planting more plant cards from your hand.
Once all the trowels have been placed, roll the twenty dice — five each for the four traits — re-roll any mutation symbols (which means a mutation has to appear twice to stick around), then place the dice in the appropriate locations based on the current Punnett squares, that is, the depiction of the parental traits and the possible combinations of those traits among the descendants.
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Modified Punnett squares and available traits
Players with first picks take a die from the matching colored area, then validate a trait on one of their pea plants by covering it; if a mutation is available, they can take the mutation die and another die of the same color to "find" a trait that otherwise isn't present — but doing so takes up two of your three dice slots, so you want to avoid this, if possible. That said, if your choice is to take two dice or take none, you're probably going to take two. After all, you chose that first pick spot because you wanted to validate a trait!
Once the second picks have been picked, players draft dice in clockwise order. Unless you've made extra room, you have only three dice slots available, so you can't do too much — and depending on the roll of the dice and what other players take, you might not even have three choices available to you. (You cannot take a die unless you can use it. You're all working in a monastery, after all, and ideally upholding certain behavioral tenets, so you're not going to spite someone else for no reason. If, however, you happen to spite someone while benefitting yourself, well, that was God's will. No need to ask for forgiveness.)
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Behold! My stuff
During the buying phase, you can get new stuff: a plot to give yourself more room for pea plants, a dice slot so that you can draft an extra die, another trowel so that you can do more stuff, or an assistant who has a very limited skill set. Each time you buy something, the price of that something goes up, and each player can buy one item in reverse player order for as long their money and desire to get new stuff holds out.
In the image above, you can see that I invested heavily in assistants, with Father Omari giving you a new action in which you roll dice to validate traits, Brother Leopold giving you a discount on all purchases down to a minimum of one coin, Sister Elisabeth allowing you to validate one trait each round that matches your research, and Sister Maria Rake allowing you to use a die for any trait of that color.
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Counting points in a four-player game
After five rounds, you harvest any fully validated pea plants, score full points for them, score 1 point for each coin in hand and each trait validated on an unfinished pea plant card, and score research points. In the image above, for example, I am the green player, and I score 2 points for each FF, Ff, TT, and Tt on my fully validated pea plant cards. Obviously I tried to draft cards with those combinations, and I ended up scoring 8 points from TT/Tt and 6 points from FF/Ff, so effectively I completed seven pea plant cards instead of five.
Everything flows smoothly and works in Genotype, partly because the design duplicates abilities across different actions. Rake is a tool that allows a one-shot use of a die as any trait you want, whereas Sister Maria allows you to do the same thing once a round — which is why her name became Sister Maria Rake in our household. You get Rake by using a trowel (or having that tool be your random starting card), whereas you get an assistant by spending money, and you get money by using trowels, so in a way trowels and coins blur to be the same thing: money.
Similarly, Pollen Brush is a one-shot tool that allows you validate all instances of a trait when you validate the trait once, and assistant Sister May is a living pollen brush that lets you do this all the time. Flower Pot is a tool that lets you draft a pea plant, giving you a one-shot plot in which to plant something extra, while Brother Eduard, a.k.a. Father Flower Pot, lets you draft a pea plant, but he sticks around after it's harvested so that you can plant something else on him. (He barely bathes, I suppose, and his body is covered in fertile soil.) You can also spend coins on a plot, but that plot doesn't come pre-loaded with a plant.
A duplication of efforts
A new trowel costs 3 coins, but to get those coins, you'll likely have needed to visit the treasury for 2 coins, which means you spent an action now to get an extra action later, so how much did you really gain? Ideally you nab that extra trowel in the first round so that you gain four "extra" actions over the course of the game, but players have won without buying extra trowels, so it's hardly something you're forced to do. Additionally, aside from assistants that can grab you a last-minute trait, purchases in the fourth round often seem like a poor investment since you're paying coins — that is, points — in return for...what exactly? A dice slot might get you another die depending on what's rolled, and that covered trait is worth 1 point, so unless you complete a pea plant, you're throwing money away.
You roll twenty dice no matter the player count, so you typically have more options available for drafting in a game with fewer players — I say this having played once with two players, twice with three, and once with four on a review copy from Genius Games — but no matter the player count, you might find yourself walking away empty handed simply because the traits you want aren't available. In one game, a player took first pick three times in one game and never got the trait they wanted as neither it nor a mutation appeared on the dice. You know dice can be fickle, but hoo boy, do you see it in action in Genotype, primarily because you don't roll enough dice enough times for the results to match the expected distribution in the Punnett square. Take back-up measures to try to avoid finding yourself in this situation.
For more detailed descriptions of the actions and thoughts on the game, check out this overview video:
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