Game review: Strain

What is Strain?

Strain is a family game of competitive of bioengineering in which each player competes to create the ultimate micro-organism by evolving and adapting their creations whilst outsmarting the competition.  The aim is to score twelve victory points which are scored by completing your organism (surrounding it with tiles), of course, the highest scoring organisms require more tiles.  The tiles used in the game are drawn from three areas; ‘organism’ (build a new winner!), ‘cytoplasm’ (a cell organelle that provides ATP, toxins or resistance) and ‘petri dish’ (a mixture of organelles, actions and viruses)

Is it Fun?

In Strain, you use your microorganism’s tiles to generate ATP (the currency of the game) and toxin (which allows you to attack other players' microorganisms).  However, creating either of these resources leaves you own micro-organism vulnerable to attack as it loses its resistance.  This creates a strategic tension between the players which contributes to the game's appeal.  For example, do you risk drawing four energy from your ectoplasm, thereby lowering your resistance to cast a cilium that allows you to swap your tiles around?  Or do you save them in case you need to draw toxins to stave off a virus threat?

Is it Educational?

The game is very scientifically themed throughout.  The game's mechanics have tried hard to create a meaningful biotechnology process in a boardgame.  This is made successful because of the detail given to the game’s components such as the organelles, viruses and actions in the game.  As an example, the ribosome card costs four ATP to add to your organism but allows you to ‘make’ draw extra cards each turn.  The cards' functions are thoughtfully aligned to their biological counterparts.  This linkage is subtle and a player with limited biological knowledge would likely draw little other than some new vocabulary from the experience.  On a broad level, the game would offer insights into the delicate balance of natural and synthetic bioengineering.

Conclusion

A game with a lot of depth and character.  It takes a few goes to get used to the ways the cards interact and the terminology (non-scientists) but when you do it is a fun and competitive resource-based strategy game.

Dr Louise Robinson is Lecturer in Forensic Biology and Dr Ian Turner an Associate Professor in Learning and Teaching, both at the University of Derby.