Diatoms Sneak Peek

0:00 let's talk about diatoms a scientific tile placing game that's coming to Kickstarter soon the brains on games I'm Dr Brian McDonald in this episode we're going to talk about an upcoming game that was sent to me not too long ago by the folks over at Ludo liminal it's a game called diatoms now diatoms is coming to Kickstarter soon I'll include some information about the campaign in the show notes below this video but diatoms is a game for between one and four players there are Solo rules in the box it is a game that can be played by kids aged 8 and up and games take only about half an hour to 45 minutes let's take a deeper look at diatoms by ludoliminal diatoms is a light to medium tile placement game now of course this is a prototype so components might change by the time this game actually gets to people's hands uh but it's a it's a very beautiful shiny prototype as you might be able to see I'll also take some pictures and and hopefully the glitteriness of the components will show up in the photos on these cameras but diatoms is like I said light to medium you're trying to earn victory points by creating a mosaic on this Slide the theme Here is about naturalists in the 1800s who used to collect these microscopic bits of algae from water samples and organize them artistically

1:30 on slides that might be collected or purchased by other naturalists so you've got these shiny pieces in different colors and different shapes and you're trying to earn the most victory points by placing them on your slide board in the basic game you'll have these three judges and you've got these judging cards on the table to remind you of how you want to place those diatoms so that you can earn the most points you're judging sheet where you keep track of your score at the end of the game is also going to be a helpful reminder of how these things work so you're trying to collect the most colors you're trying to have a variety of shapes in each ring and you're trying to place things symmetrically if possible now there are a number of guest judges in the Box as well so there are several of these guest judges and you're going to choose one at random potentially at the start of the game if you're if you're more advanced if you're more familiar with the game and they might give you a ton of points where they might give you penalties so there's an easy going mode for each one and a more Persnickety version of the judge so when their Persnickety they're not just going to give you points if you follow their rules they're also going to take points away if you do things that they don't like so you're earning points by placing these diatoms on your slide but how are you getting the diatoms well this is where the tie laying comes in so there are going to be two stacks of these tiles with different colors of water samples on each one at the beginning of each turn you start with two of these and at the beginning of each turn you draw a third one so you've

3:00 got three options one of the things that I like about these tiles is that they are double-sided and the opposite side is a mirror image of the other side so that it just gives you a little bit more flexibility in terms of placement and then you are just placing tiles on the board so that the touching colors match that's the one rule for tile placement you have to make sure anywhere that your tile that you're placing touches another one the colors have to match and of course there's some blank spots and those are kind of like wild cards then you take a look at the intersection you've created and this is what's going to determine which shapes and which colors you're going to get so in this case they've included this little lens which I really liked it made it super easy to visualize what it was we were getting as we were placing the tile so you've got six different areas underneath that lens and in this case five out of six are are red so I'm going to get a red star that I can place somewhere on my slide board and like I said I'm trying to think about a variety of shapes within each ring there's three rings on your board you might be trying to place things so that they can be symmetrical I'm going to want another red star over here if I can get it that's going to get me 15 points and you want to make sure that there's a variety within each ring so you really are puzzling things out even just in a basic game you're building two puzzles you're adding the tile to get the pieces you want and then you're deciding how to place those pieces on your slide and the

4:31 play just continues like that you place a tile you take whatever samples you get from that tile you place them on on your board the next player I mean unless there's something serious happening that the next player needs to see your placement how you're arranging things the next player can begin well you're deciding how to place those pieces on your board of course you can't place another tile until you've put all your pieces in when it comes back around to you but there is a little bit of simultaneous play if you want to keep the game moving along you've got some time to think well the other players play their turn because there's no interaction there's no way for you to affect what's happening on another player's slide we never had to open the rule book really once we we've we've figured out the basics we didn't have to open the rule book again because we had this cheat sheet and we had that little lens that made it easy to visualize everything play continues until the final tile is placed and everybody's placed their diatoms on their board and then you begin counting up points and that judging sheet does make it super easy there were some dry erase markers in the box that we could use to fill this in but it's it's very simple to figure out where all the points are coming from and then you get a subtotal for each judge you add everything together highest points win what skills are you practicing though when you play a game like diatoms well this is very much a visual spatial reasoning a spatial problem-solving game you're placing tiles in order to get the colors and the shapes that you want to place on your board and then you're organizing those on the board in order to maximize

6:01 your points there's some geometry that you're working on here as a part of that spatial reasoning process because you're thinking about Symmetry and variety you're you're trying to arrange things in a way that's going to maximize those points and you do have to look at those lines of symmetry as you work working memory is important in that process as well because you're juggling a lot of things you're placing the tile and you're trying to figure out how those fractions are going to add up in order to figure out what colors you're going to get and then you have to look at the three or four judges to decide how and where you're going to place those samples that you manage to collect each turn you'll also be thinking about fractions you know the note sheet here is going to tell you about the six that have to add up when you put everything together in the same color then you get a choice oh I can get a 4 6 and a 2 6 I can you know but when I'm playing with my 22 year old we're talking about thirds and halves of course when you're playing with younger kids they're not going to make those conversions automatically but you're you you might be talking around the table about those fractions so there is some attention to fractions there so that's another math concept that you might be thinking about so you've got that spatial reasoning the geometry knowledge you've got working memory the whiteboard in your mind where you're juggling lots of information in order to calculate how to maximize those points you're adding fractions together to get six out of six also well first of all I didn't even know what diatoms were before I opened

7:32 up the box for this game and then I did some research I had no idea that this was a they had a quote in the rule book from Charles Darwin about how beautiful these uh these shapes were that you could collect and and put on those slides so I didn't know that this was a thing that was happening in the 1800s so again we're talking here then about some specific historical knowledge you know I learned a couple of historical facts just from reading the rule book of this game and doing some research to do this video um but you know I do like games that spark some sort of curiosity and here you are arranging a mosaic but you're you're thinking of it as being a mosaic that's on a microscopic slide so it's uh it gives it it Fosters hopefully it Sparks some curiosity maybe in the kids that are playing this game to learn a little bit more the rule book and of course it's a prototype rule book did have some photos of of those slides from the 1800s so you get an idea of what they looked like and they did look exactly like this final thoughts about diatomps well well this is a game that's well it's very thematic you've got petri dishes to hold the pieces in the pieces look like they did on those slides the pictures that I saw in the rule book so it is certainly thematic in that way you've got the lens which I really like to to help make things easier and and you're you're building two puzzles that's something I found quite interesting so you're not just focusing on the tiles you're also

9:02 focusing on your microscopic pieces that you're organizing into that Mosaic on on your slide board that adds an extra spatial element to it that we all enjoyed so you're building these two puzzles the other thing that I really like now I played this with my adult son I haven't played it with younger kids but I will tell you what with that lens that makes it easier to visualize those six parts that you're trying to put together with the data collection notes that make it easy to remember the rules so that you don't have to go back and keep reading and reading and reading with the the judges card that makes it easy to add things up this is a game that's going to be straightforward for the younger kids but the spatial problem solving is still strategic so we did have a lot of fun playing that element of the game and I mean the pieces are beautiful this is just a prototype and they're so sparkly and shiny I took some pictures of it under almost under a black light or as black as I could make it to see if that would show up more on the camera but everything is sparkly it has a great table presence as well now if there's a downside to a game like diatoms it's that you are doing your own thing there's no interaction between the players other than admiring the work that they've done maybe they're going to place a tile in a spot that you wanted but you can't interfere with the other players board in any way I can't put anything on their board that's going to ruin the pattern that they're trying to

10:33 make so there's no interaction between players which I know might be a factor for some folks but for us this was just a great relaxing but strategic game for us to play where we were creating these beautiful patterns at the same time I will of course include in the show notes below this video information about the campaign or where or a link to a page where you can find more information about diatoms if you have any questions you can of course leave them in the comments section below the video where you can email me at Brian brainsongames.ca brains on games dot CA is the website that's where future episodes ago the previous ones are up there already brains on games is the Twitter handle and the Facebook page and the Instagram feed so we're all over the place and if you enjoyed this video and you want to be notified of future ones you can head on over to YouTube and click that subscribe button thanks for joining me and hopefully I'll see you next time foreign