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Oceans
60m - 90m
2 - 4 Players
Ages 12+
Three years in the making, Oceans is a stand-alone game in the award-winning Evolution series. With over 120 works of art, 40 scenarios cards, and more than 100 unique trait cards, Oceans is the most ambitious project North Star Games has ever tackled.
Theme
Oceans depicts the boundaries between the known world near the ocean’s surface, and the mysteries lurking in Earth’s deepest unexplored region. Enter a vast, underwater cosmos: a mysterious interconnected world of sharp teeth, glowing eyes, and black ink, where your survival depends on your ability to adapt to the unknown.
The foundation of the oceanic food chain are billions of one-celled organisms called phytoplankton that capture the sun’s energy through photosynthesis. Every other species in the ocean is a predator, each bigger than the next, all the way up to the dreaded Apex Predator. And even bigger than Apex Predators are enormous Whales that gently swim through the ocean scooping up everything in their path. This ecosystem mimics the known world near the surface.
But there is more if you are willing to dive deeper…
Oceans also includes a deck of 100 unique power cards called The Deep that represents the unknown. These powerful cards break the seams of the reality you’ve come to accept, ranging from astonishing things found in the ocean, to the fantastical Kraken or Leviathan.
Gameplay
Oceans is an interactive engine builder, where players evolve their species in a continually changing ecosystem. Players must adapt their interconnected ecosystem to survive against the inevitable march of time (Aging), as well as a multitude of predators looking for food.
During the first half of the game, players use traits from a deck of Surface cards to modify their species. With only 12 Surface traits, it’s easy to wade into your first game without being overwhelmed by new cards. These traits were chosen for their rich thematic interconnections, providing synergistic card play that mimics an oceanic ecosystem. The Surface traits bring stability to the game environment.
During the second half of the game, players can use power cards from The Deep to disrupt the stability. With over 100 unique traits in The Deep, players will slowly discover game-altering traits over the course of many games. These traits were designed to evoke wonder and disbelief – to spark your imagination as you consider the fantastic synergies that are possible in Oceans.
Additionally, there are 2 randomly chosen scenario cards that activate and deactivate at various points during the game. The scenario cards impact the basic tenets of gameplay, encouraging people to vary their play style and strategy each game.
The Evolution Series
Oceans is a stand-alone game in the Evolution series, but it’s a vast departure from other games in the series. The turn structure has been simplified, the game play is much more forgiving, and the web of interconnections has increased dramatically. Whereas Evolution has the feeling of a traditional back-and-forth battle game like Magic: The Gathering, Oceans has the feel of an interactive engine builder where everything is interconnected, and where your engine must continually adapt to a changing environment.
Magazine Articles About Oceans
– Science Magazine
– ScienceNews.org
– Ars Technica
| Ages | 12+ |
|---|---|
| Players | 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players |
| Play Time | 60m – 90m |
| Designer | Ben Goldman, Brian O'Neill, Dominic Crapuchettes, Nick Bentley |
| Mechanics | Hand Management |
| Theme | Animals, Card Game, Educational, Environmental, Prehistoric |
| Publisher | Ediciones MasQueOca, Funforge, North Star Games, Pendragon Game Studio, Schwerkraft-Verlag |
apokellypse
Played this yesterday and had a blast! Really good ratio of time spent to fun gained. I really like the hand limit, which balances players who want to only draw Deep cards, forcing them to balance tactics because Surface cards allow for more variety, and because one cannot Discard Deep cards without playing them first. In our two games, each about 90 minutes, we saw a variety of gameplay and got through half of the Deep deck. Some players were very pacifist and used Whale Cleaning and No Overpopulating to completely sustain themselves. Other players surrounded their Apex Predator with Shark Cleaners and got population that way. It was super fun finding new ways to chain, and responding to the game specific conditions that forced us to change strategies. I found that there was still a sense of balance through variety, but I will say that without the excitement and risk of Deep cards this game would not be nearly as fun. At the same time, I am glad there are only 12 types of base cards, so I wouldn't change anything at the moment. Maybe a future expansion will have a deck of cards that bridges the gap between Surface cards and Deep Cards.
AHforever
Bringing this down from a nine to an eight. at its core, this game was almost a 9/10 for me BUT: its fiddly (oops we forgot to leech, oops i forgot to trigger cleaner, oops i forgot i could have attacked your unattackable species, oops i forgot my species was unattackable), etc. When your new, you needlessly throw away species from time to time due to miscalc. This is one of those games that needs 10+ plays to come to grips with the strategies and fiddlyness and exceptions all over the place. Perfect game for a camping cabin or some kind of closed group of people trapped together. I fear that we dont have that kind of time or patience as we are an almost 300 game collection so, although it was very close to a 9 or even 10, im bringing this one back down to an 8 with watchlist for 7
Agyar
It's really good. Not as brutal as Evolution Climate but it has a lot of interesting stuff going on. The core concept remains interesting and everything is highly thematic. I enjoy the ability of the species to interact with more species in Oceans than what they were capable of in Evolution. I think the notion that it's a softer game is only surface-deep (hah), as there are so many ways to directly impact how many points your opponents are taking and how they're having to manage their species. Your species don't die straight away in most cases but there are plenty of ways to shove people in between a rock and a hard place.