/pic8170529.jpg)
Welcome to the Insectarium, a museum of insects! You are tasked with creating a board of insect specimens for display in the Insectarium's main hall. You must use your gear, gather insect specimens, and collect tools to precisely arrange and pin your specimens in your display.
On your turn, you will choose a card and token from the yard and pin an insect specimen to your board. Precisely pin your insects, collect display tools for bonuses, and swap tokens for gear abilities.
During the game, each player will take exactly nine turns to choose specimens and gear, and pin cards to their display board. At the end of the game, each row and column of specimens will be scored based on type and color categories.
Will you have the most precise specimen display that will be chosen for the Insectarium?
—description from the publisher
- beautiful artwork
- accessible for younger players
- quick, light family game
- can be light on depth
- some luck with available tiles
- insects and natural world
- nature/insects; tile-lane drafting
- abstract, tile-lane drafting with scoring tokens
- Cascadia
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Compound Scoring — Patterns on tiles determine points; tokens can modify scoring.
- pattern-based scoring — Patterns on tiles determine points; tokens can modify scoring.
- set collection / tile placement — Collect tiles to maximize scoring potential.
- tile drafting — Place tiles to score in columns/rows and gain symbols.
- Tool/Token mitigation — Tools allow drawing extra cards and other aids to offset luck.
- Turn-in tokens for scoring — Exchanging cards for tokens provides scoring options.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I'm happy and sad at the same time.
- being super honest about that kind of stuff.
- we are going to say goodbye to Grand Austria Hotel.
- reviewers don't always mesh with our taste because a fairly famous reviewer did not like this game
- it's an easy no-brainer for us. It hits the table often and it's always fun when it does
- Phil Walker-Harding is one of our favorite designers.