Players: 3-4
Time: 2 hours
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)

Primordial Soup in published in Germany as Ursuppe.

The Components

Primordial Soup comes in a large box full of pretty components:

• 1 gameboard
• Wood Bits:
  • 28 amoebas
  • 220 foodstuff cubes
  • 4 score markers
  • 25 damage point beads
  • 37 biological points
  • 2 dice
• Cards:
  • 33 gene cards
  • 11 environment cards
• 1 rulebook
• 4 reference books

Gameboard: A 4-panel gameboard printed on solid gameboard. The main part of the board is made up of an approximately 4x5 grid. (I say approximately because it's got a couple of grid spaces missing, plus one one-space peninsula, to add a bit of chaos to the game. There's also a little compass in the middle to remind you of which die rolls cause you to go in which directions as well as a scoring track along the edges.

The gameboard is done in shades of gray and thus is pretty dull to look at. I assume this was intended to contrast with the very colorful wooden pieces, and perhaps that was the right choice, but it's still dull to the eye. There are, however, cute Doris Matthaus drawings of amoebas around the edges of the board.

Wood Bits: The game is filled with high-quality wood bits in a variety of colors. In the player colors (red, green, yellow, blue) we have the amoebas and the food cubes. The cubes are just that: cubes. The amoebas, meanwhile, are neat constructs. Each one has a base with a stick jutting up from that; yout actually have to put them together with a hammer when you get the game, but it's well worth the trouble because they look cool. Each color has its own unique base shape (square for green, round for red, hexagonal for blue, and octagonal for yellow), to help differentiate them even further, a nice touch. There's also numbers and a set eyes painted onto each base, another nice touch, though the "1" and the "7" are a tiny bit hard to tell apart.

The damage beads go over that stick in each amoeba. It's a nice visual representation of damage. They're painted silver.

The biological point markers are wood discs in two colors and sizes, small dark brown for "1"s and large light brown for "5"s. They're easy to tell apart thanks to this differentiation.

Finally, the dice are wooden, painted red, with the pips indented and inked. As a result they're easy to read.

Cards: The cards are all full-color and regular-sized, printed on medium-weight, glossy cardstock.

The gene cards each name a gene, list its effect, show a cost, and show a mutation point value. There's also some cute art on each card. Helpfully, the advanced genes, which have some special rules, are printed with a red name rather than black, to make them easy to tell apart. Again, well-produced and easy to use. Three blank gene cards are also included, so that you can make your own genes. (For thoughts about what to put on those cards, see here.)

The environment cards. show a direction of current drift as well as an Ozone Layer Thickness rating. They're cleverly printed so that you place them right on the compass in the middle of the board so that everyone can easily see them.

Rulebook: A 4-page rulesheet, printed nicely in full color on glossy paper.There are plenty of illusrative pictures and a useful encyclopedia of terms. Overall, a great introduction to the rules.

Reference Books: Each player also gets a 4-page black & white reference book which summarizes the turns, lists the scoring values, and then has three pages listing all the genes you can buy. This reference book is entirely crucial for play, so it's great that it was included.

Box & Tray: A large box with no real tray. You'll need some baggies to hold the pieces and something to keep the cards together.

Overall, Primordial Soup is a superb production. The wood pieces are all beautiful, particularly the entirely unique amoebas. Everything also seems oriented toward making the game easy to play, particularly those player reference books. The game thus earns an unquestioning "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Primordial Soup is to rise up the evolutionary ladder (that'd be the scoring track) through the genetic mutation and proliferation of your amoeba species.

The following rules describe play for 4 players, which is really how the game is intended (though 3 looks to work OK; it changes up a few rules).

Setup: The board is laid out in the middle of the table and two food cubes of each color are placed on each space of the board. Each player takes 4 biological points (BPs).

An environment card is placed in the middle of the board. Each of these cards shows two things. First is the direction of drift (north, south, east, west, or none), which is the direction an amoeba will move if he doesn't exert effort. In addition each card shows an ozone layer thickness, which protects amoebas from gene defects (losing mutations).

Players then choose where to put their scoring markers on the scoring track, one each from 1-4. Higher values of course mean more points, and give some deficits and some benefits based on turn order. On the scoring track two players can never be at the same place, which is quite an intriguing mechanism.

Finally each player places two amoebas on the board, one of which has a damage marker on it.

Order of Play: Play continually cycles through six phases. In the first phase (movement & feeding) each player takes his action starting from the player with the least points, which tends to give the behind players a big advantage. In the other five phases, each player takes an action starting with the player with the most points, which sometimes gives the first player an advantage (particularly in buying genes) and sometimes a disadvantage (particularly in cell division).

The phases are:

1. Movement & Feeding
2. Environment & Gene Defects
3. New Genes
4. Cell Division
5. Deaths
6. Scoring

Phase 1: Movement & Feeding: This is the heart of the game, and where most of the time is spent. Each player moves each of his amoebas in numerical order (as you might remember, there's a number printed on each amoeba).

By default a player moves his amoeba in the direction of drift shown by the current environment card, or stays in place if there's a board edge or a non-space in that direction. Alternatively the player may decide to spent 1 BP to move that amoeba, in which case he rolls a die. 1-4 moves him in an appropriate compass direction, 5 keeps him in that space, and 6 lets him move that amoeba in a direction of his choice.

Once in his final space the amoeba must then eat. He is required to eat one cube of each color other than his own. (They're removed from the board). Then he excretes two cubes of his color, which are placed on the board.

If a player can't eat, he starves; a damage bead is placed on him.

Phase 2: Environment & Gene Defects: Next a new environment card is flipped up. It shows the direction of drift for the next round, and also the ozone layer thickness.

The ozone layer is related to the gene cards, which we'll get to in a second. Each gene card, besides having a price, also has a mutation point value (which is usually within one point of the cost). When the new ozone layer thickness is revealed (they're usually in the range of 8-12), each player must then sum up his mutation point total. If it's higher than the ozone layer thickness he must pay the difference in BPs and/or discard gene cards.

Phase 3: New Genes: So does this sound too simple so far? That's because we haven't gotten to the gene cards yet. In phase 3 each player gets to buy gene cards by spending BPs. They cost from 2-6 BPs each, and each has a special power that affects all of a player's amoebas.

Some affect movement, such as Movement I, which lets a player throw two dice for movement and take his choice, or Speed, which lets a player move an amoeba twice in a turn.

Some affect eating, such as Frugality, which lets an amoeba eat one less foodstuff cube, and Substitution, which lets an amoeba eat one less color of foodstuff, but requires one cube more.

Some are aggresive, such as Struggle for Survival, which lets an amoeba eat another amoeba if there isn't enough food in his space. Naturally there are defensive genes as well.

A few of the genes are "advanced"; you have to trade in another gene to get one of these, and they're typically very powerful. One example is Movement II, which lets an amoeba choose its direction of movement, rather than rolling a die.

There are only one or two of each gene card, so they're quite restricted, and as often your gameplay will derive from what gene cards you can get as the converse.

Phase 4: Cell Division: Next each player gets 10 BPs, and can then choose to divide his amoebas: creating new amoebas on spaces adjacent to those with his current amoebas--for a cost of 6 BPs per amoeba.

Not surprisingly there are some genes which affect cell division, including spores (create a new amoeba anywhere) and division rate (reduces cost to 4 BPs).

Phase 5: Death: Any amoeba with 2 damage points now dies; it is replaced by 2 foodstuff cubes of each colors.

And, again, there are genes that affect this phase, including Longevity (which increases the death level to 3 points) and the advanced gene Aggression (which lets a player arbitrarily kill other amoebas in this phase).

Phase 6: Scoring: Finally, each player scores from 0-6 points depending on how many amoebas he has out and from 0-4 points depending on how many gene cards he has. (Advanced Genes count double.)

As you may recall, you can never be on the same space as another player on the scoring track; if you end up there you advance another space, past them.

Ending the Game: The game ends either when a player ends up with 42+ points at the end of scoring, or else ten rounds have been played (that's all the environment cards). The player with the most points wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Although clearly a game, Primordial Soup feels very much like a simulation too. In fact it's immediately reminescent of Conway's Game of Life. The latter is a simulation too, where individual cells live or die based on how many neighbors they have. Primordial Soup, with its system of intaking and outputting colored food is clearly more complex, but a somewhat similar simulation. (And sure enough, Frank & Doris list some Life-related sites among their bookmarks.

Primordial Soup is one of a couple of games that encourage players to select genes to influence their group of primordial critters. Others include Evo, a dinosaur-auction game, and Urland, the thematic sequel to Primordial Soup.

Although originally a German design, Primordial Soup is slightly far from the norm. It's still got entirely solid mechanics, but the theme is core to the game, which is pretty rare for German designs, and as already noted it's simulationistic, another rarity. The game length (2 hours) is also longer than the German norm, though indy publishers such as Doris & Frank seem more willing to push game lengths.

Primordial Soup is also Z-Man Game's first foray into the world of German game publishing. They successfully choose one of the very good German games that had never seen much American distribution, which was apparently the point. Their second, planned German game is Santiago, another well-spoken-of German game that hasn't been published in the United States. Traditionally Z-Man Games has published lighter, beer & pretzels card games and has recently moved into larger board game designs with Ideology.

The Game Design

Primordial Soup really succeeds best as a simulation. It's amusing to see how the board slowly evolves, with foodcubes coming and going, and it's fun to see how different evolutionary traits can influence the game. (I'm amazed that there isn't a "survival of the fittest" web site out there where players can log which traits were possessed by the winning amoeba species, thus giving an opportunity to map out long-term evolutionary trends in the game.)

The gameplay is enjoyable. The strategy isn't very deep, though choosing genes then playing according to them is meaningful. You also have some meaningful tactical choices, based primarily on where to move your amoebas too, and also when to spend BPs on dividing and when to save them for gene purchases. The game can get a bit chaotic because of the uncertainty of multiple player actions; unless you're moving & eating first, it's a little hard to predict what foodstuffs will be left for you.

Beyond the superb simulation, one of my favorite aspects of the game design of Primordial Soup is the multiple paths to victory; the different genes allow you to embark upon very different gameplay paths.

On the down side I think that Primordial Soup is a little long for its gameplay variety, at about 2 hours. The rules do suggest you could use a different point value for your end condition, and I think "30" or maybe "35" would have been better than "42".

On the whole, I think that Primordial Soup is elegant, amusing, and fun to play. Even if it's not a real gamer's game because of its chaos, it still earns a "4" out of "5" for Substance: above average and well worth playing.

Conclusion

Primordial Soup is a fun simulation game that clearly had some basis in Conway's Game of Life. The strategy is a bit light, but there's some nice tactics, and a great feeling of investigating evolutionary fitness. The production is also beautiful. Overall, I'd definitely recommend this game, finally available through American distribution.

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