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Subatomic: An Atom Building Game is a deck-building game in which players compete to build a number of available elements, which score them points.
Each player starts with the same small deck of cards that consist of proton, neutron, and electron cards. They use these cards to build upon their current atom (by playing these cards face-up as subatomic particles) in an attempt to construct one of the available element cards. Alternatively, players may use their hand of cards to purchase more powerful cards for later use (by playing them in combinations of face-down cards as energy and face-up cards as subatomic particles). Subatomic introduces a unique variation on deck-building with a highly accurate chemistry theme, with the ultimate goal of building elements to score points, but allowing many varying types of strategies.
- Educational aspect enhances gameplay by connecting to real science.
- The game mechanics allow for strategic depth in building atoms and claiming elements.
- Components were borrowed from other games as a hard copy was not yet released.
- Claiming an element causes the loss of all particles built up in the atom, even if more than required.
- atom building
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — Players choose from a variety of actions each turn, including playing cards, buying cards, building atoms, claiming elements, and spending energy for special actions.
- area majority — Players place cubes on end goals for elements, and scoring is based on having the most cubes in those areas.
- Deck building — Players use cards to build atoms and claim elements, and acquired cards cycle through their deck.
- Resource management — Players manage energy tokens and particle cards (quarks, protons, neutrons, electrons) to perform actions and build atoms.
- set collection — Players collect element cards which have victory point values and contribute to end-game scoring based on sets or majorities.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- science is fun
- Subatomic is a deck building game in which players will be using elementary and sub atomic particle cards in order to try to build up atoms to claim elements from the elements board in order to gain victory points
- the game ends after one player has claimed his or her fifth element card and the player with the highest number of victory points wins the game
- you will start with a handful of lowly quarks you will then fuse them together to form protons and neutrons as well as electrons which you will fuse together to form your atoms and it is the atoms which you will be claiming from the board for victory points
- So instead of one of the neutron cards you could spend two down quarks and an up quark which represents a neutron in order to take that same card
- the number of victory points that a card is worth is equal to the mass number shown in the bottom corner here
- In the event of a tie the points for the tied positions are shared rounded down
- finally and not written on the main board if you've got three identical cards in your hand you can discard one of them to draw another one for free