Chromosome (2016)

About this game

A huge meteor containing some form of extra-terrestrial life crashes to Earth somewhere in the icy wasteland of Antarctica. The American government sets up a secret facility whose goal is to contain and examine these new and unfamiliar lifeforms — but something goes wrong. A huge storm damages the station, destroying vital systems. The alien microbes escape and begin to spread and conflict with each other, while the station's human inhabitants rapidly succumb to the cold. The last survivor, afraid of what the microbes could do to humanity, initiates a self-destruction procedure. There are four minutes left... Chromosome is an asymmetrical, tactical board game for 2-4 players. As an alien microbe, unaware of your impending doom, you struggle to survive and to escape the laboratory. As one of four microbe species, you have four general and four unique actions to take during your turn. You use them to spawn your microbe, fight other microbes, manipulate energy, create radioactive spaces, and finally mutate – to get new genes (four different types) that will help you to fight better, grow faster, and overcome your opponents. Your goal is to create the most effective set of genes to thrive in an environment that might be different each time you play. You win the game and escape the station if you have more population tokens on the board and more enemy microbes destroyed than any other player.

Does it fit your group?

• Group size. Works with 2 to 4.
• Rules load. At 2.8/5 this is a mid-weight game — expect a proper rules explanation before you start.
• Age. The publisher suggests 8 and up. That rates the rules rather than the artwork, so judge the box yourself for younger players.