Circle of Life is a strategy game where players evolve species to eat each other in a growing ecosystem.
Winner of:
- The Mind Sports Olympiad’s Game of the Year Award
- The BoardGameGeek Community Best Combinatorial Game Award
It’s for folks who like 2-player abstract games, with no luck, simple rules, and strategic depth.
Play it online at Board Game Arena
Positive comments about it I’ve found online
“I am a HUGE fan of this game. It truly is a beautiful design and is in my opinion the best modern abstract.”
“This game is amazing! I haven’t played dozens of games but the few experiences I am having are unbelievably tense and full of surprises! The best abstract I have seen in a long time…”
“Wow. This abstract is pretty boss. It’s engrossing, wildly different, and has a theme that actually works as a theme?”
“I think the game is GENIUS in its elegance & the ecosystem concept involved…“
See it played here:
Rules
2 players | 20-30 minutes
Equipment: Circle of Life board + one set of differently colored stones per player. Here’s a picture of the board at the end of a game played with orange and black pieces:
Definitions
- Critter: any connected group of same-color stones on the board is a critter. A single stone is also a critter.
- Circle of Life: surrounding the board is the Circle of Life, which shows how critters of different species feed. Each species is defined by its shape and can eat one other species, as indicated by arrows – if an arrow points from species A to species B, then A can eat B. All possible species of up to 4 stones are represented on the Circle of Life.
Gameplay
The board begins empty. Players take turns. Each turn has two steps, taken in order:
- Evolve: you must place one stone of your color on any empty space, with one restriction: you may not make a critter containing more than 4 stones.
- Feed: the critter you evolved in step 1 must eat all enemy critters which are adjacent to it and on which it can feed, per the Circle of Life. Remove eaten critters from the board.
A player wins when she either can’t evolve on her turn (meaning she’s filled up the ecosystem as much as possible), or has eaten at least 20 stones.
Turn Example
Evolve:
Feed:
In the example above, orange first places a stone to create a 3-stone critter, then eats an enemy critter.
The game recreates key aspects of real ecosystems, with minimal rules
- It starts with simple species, which evolve to become more diverse and complex.
- Species get more complex as you go up the food chain.
- Simple species reproduce, die, and evolve at higher rates than more complex ones.
- When a species’ population is high, another species often evolves to eat it.
- As in real ecosystems, intransitive competition enables biodiversity.
- When a critter at the top of the food chain dies, it feeds back into the bottom, to complete the Circle of Life.
Beginner Strategy Tips
- Don’t eat opponent critters when unnecessary. It’s almost always better to delay eating to the last moment. When you eat your opponent’s critter, you also give your opponent more flexibility.
- If a critter of yours is sure to be eaten, try to exploit the situation by eating the critter that threatens to eat yours, or set yourself up to eat it after it eats yours.
- Size-4 critters can’t evolve, which means if they can be eaten, they will be. Be aware of all the possible ways your opponent can eat a size-4 critter you might make and (usually) don’t make it if they can eat it.
- Be aware of the balance between stones played and stones captured as you grow each critter. For example, let’s say you have a 2-stone critter that eats an enemy’s 1-stone critter, then grows into a 3-stone critter that eats 3 of the opponent’s 2-stone critters. That’s 3 friendly stones added to the board, for 7 enemy stones removed. Even if your opponent eats your size-3 critter, you’ll be ahead after the exchange.
- Try to minimize the number of moves you have left to play and maximize your opponent’s. In the late stage if there is no tactical advantage to be gained, fill the cells that only you can fill before the ones that both you and your opponent can fill.
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Design Story
I helped design or develop most of North Star Games’ Evolution games, all of which are ecosystem simulations. While doing so, I posed myself the following challenge: make the simplest possible ecosystem game that exhibits key properties of real ecosystems. Circle of Life is the result.
The idea is to represent species with shapes, with rules about which can eat which. The Circle of Life around the board contains those rules: 12 predator-prey relationships at the heart of the game.
The hardest part was arranging the species on the circle so they’d get more complex (and therefore harder to evolve) as you go up the food chain.
I had to figure out how to measure species’ complexity, and I did it in two ways. First, I built a path diagram for the construction of all the shapes:
From this diagram I could calculate a measure of species’ complexity.
Second, Scott Olesen, then a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard in computational biology, helped confirm my calculations through numerical simulations
(I haven’t given enough information here to reproduce my calculations, for brevity).
I discovered this game recently on BGA and it is amazing, I love it!
I also noticed this: “you may wish to name the creatures and label them on the board, to assist players’ imaginations. “, and indeed one difficulty I have as a beginner is that I can not play without constantly checking the board directions.
This is fine! But as a result I have been giving some thoughts lately about possible names. Animals are the obvious choice, but to make them memorable they would need to share vague shape similarity AND respect the actual food chain, which has proved harder than I initially thought!
An alternative that appear to work well is to use the Arabic alphabet!
Starting with ⬢ ء (hamza ), I suggest associating the patterns in this order
ء hamza
ا Alif
ب Bā
ث Thā
ح Ḥā
د Dāl (or alternativly: ر Rā )
س Sīn
ط Ṭā
ق Qāf
ل Lem
م Mīm
و Wāw
The advantage is that each pattern looks more or less like the corresponding letter and the food chain matches the alphabetical order. Moreover, this might help someday in naming short term tactics by associating letters to form words that describe the patterns being formed or removed. I also like that hamza, can either be considered the first or last letter of the alphabet, as it is a quite special character in arabic, so that matches the role of ⬢ 🙂
I draw a table that associate the two but found no way to contact you directly, so hopefully the graphical resemblance is visible enough!
Wonderful game. I have a name system I’ve been using to remember. Names are friendly, almost all one syllable and describe the shape.
In order:
Pip, Dub, Kink, Slash, Tight, Ax, Cane, Arc, Dub-dub, Blob, Star, Line
Dub-dub can alternatively be dub-kink. This is I think the weakest name.
Sometimes I think of blob as kite, but that’s a little too close to tight and not as convenient to remember.
Thanks for these naming suggestions, both of you! At the moment I’m leaning towards animal names, in keeping with the theme, but I could be persuaded off of that if there’s a good case for another scheme (like memorability). @PhantomOfTheseCindrz’ scheme does seem easy to remember. Thanks for this. I’ll take it into consideration as I work on the problem.
I just started to play it, and I love it too.
And yes, that was my thinking to name the shapes too. My idea: one-two-three-four for the straights, curve for the 3 pieces curve, triangle, Y, Z, C for the letter shaped ones, in and out for the three + 1, and block for the triangle + 1. In order from one to the right:
one, four, Y, block, Z, C, out, in, triangle, three, curve, two.
Thanks for creating the game! 🙂
I like this because it’s so parsimonious. However, it loses something in theme. Not sure.
I’m not native in English, feel free to transform it as you wish.
On the other hand, there may be a version like chess 960: same rules, random 12! possible setup.
@Gergely: I’ve thought about this, but for most people, the experience of the game improves as they become familiar with the Circle relationships. That’s impossible if you change those relationships every time you play.
If the game concludes with the ‘first person can’t play’ wins then the score is not considered. This is counter intuitive. What exactly were the players meant to be fighting for in the 1st half of the game? If this is also the more likely outcome in high-level play the game turns into just a passive game. The taking element of the game is not a ‘gotcha’ feeling in any way, just a different way of positional manoeuvring. I don’t much like this element, more like reversi / othello. I much prefer a fight or die scenario that you find in chess and go. I think it could be circumvented by making the person with the highest score the winner in this ultra passive tactic. I wonder if the same tactic could be employed on a bigger board, or where the score limit in 10 not 20.
I am also curious on how the game works with a maximum block size of 3 and just 5 species.
You’re not the only person who feels that way about the win condition. I’m open to changing it, and in fact I just posted a survey in the Circle of Life community on BGA to get a better idea about how players feel in aggregate, and how they feel about the win condition you suggest.
[edit] – the poll revealed that most players prefer the current win condition, so it stays.
I have now played Circle of Life. Wow! So great. Super thematic for ecosystem/predator-prey relationships. I plan to try out the rest of your games, they all look incredibly intriguing!
Thanks so much Jonathan!
I newly registered on BGA, and fell in love with this game, and really wish i could buy a physical edition someday!
I was interested in reading your posts, explaining your process, ideas, thoughts, doubts about design and publishing.
So i will put here some thoughts:
– It took me long time to click on the BGA icon as the “organic” visual made it a bit menacing (i expected some cards game btw) … but still intriguing. It stands out from all others games. I think the final design should keep this organic idea to differentiate from the ever-generic abstract game “zen” or “scientific” design. The poetic title is also a plus.
– I think Blooms is your masterpiece, but for some reason i play more to CoL. Blooms rules are simpler but its depth frighten me a bit. CoL concept is more complex, but still elegant and also more “playful” (i eat you, you eat me). Don’t think CoL is too complex ! I am convinced CoL can sell more than Blooms.
– The path diagram is a great tool, which could be included in the game.
– I read you was thinking about giving name to forms. I think it’s a good idea but i doubt it’s something achievable. Better let it as is. The circle of life around the board is a genious idea that save the game.
– I feel the game still need some “warm” to reach more casuals players, and i feel it can comes from the physical element. I can’t help to think it will do GREAT with wool element (check the green/blue “Yoshi Wool Amibo” ..you want to grab that nose ahah. Japanese Tawashi can also work great).
– i was surprised you could build a “prey” near a “predator”, i thought it will end up in a suicide (the BGA rules didn’t describe it). I feel it weakens the thematic a bit. I later found out it was first not possible to do so, and that the rules changed (apparently the 2-hex was too strong). I think it can stay as is, but will need an elegant rules explanation to reinforce the thematic.
– i am rather a bad and slow player, so i may miss some things. But i feel the games are bit overlong (usually a good 40+min for me). I generaly lose focus once around 15 stones are captured and feel that limit would work better (for me, at least). I still didn’t explore the “satiate” wins condition. Too abstract for me at the moment.
Hope this helps!
PS: is there a mistake in the diagram? i can’t get how you evolve from form “6” to “4/4/4”
@Shobu, thank you for all this feedback. I’ve come to believe Circle of Life is likely the most publishable of my abstract games, and it sounds like you may agree.
No mistake in the diagram, as far as I can see. Hard to illustrate the construction here, since I can’t drop images here.
I like your idea of including the diagram in the game. I’ll suggest that to whoever publishes it. I don’t know who is going to publish it yet, but I feel sure it should be published, so I’ll get there sooner or later.
I have played a couple of games so far and I’m very intrigued. I think it has some complexity and depth to it and can surely be studied for a very long time by dedicated players…plus, it feels more original and unique to me compared to Blooms.
We didn’t notice anything in our games, but I was wondering if there could be a first player-advantage? Have you heard anything on that by more experienced players?
I’m not an expert on abstract strategy games, but do you have ideas how to balance it out if there is anything to balance? The standard pie rule? Letting the second player place two stones (with the restriction to not place them adjacent to the first player’s stone)?
@Al,
I don’t have any evidence of 1st player advantage so far, based on an analysis of 4000 games at Board Game Arena. Note having more stones on the board can be a weakness as often as it will be an advantage, which is why there’s no obvious first player advantage.
I’m interested in the level of complexity you assigned. You said you derived it from the path-diagram. I imagine it could be done by assigning a value by multiplying over the paths that lead to the shapes like in a path diagram. That works for all the shapes except for the two most complex where (without considering the first path of 6) the Y-shaped have 8 possible ways to get there (1*6 + 1*2) whereas the I-shaped has 12 (2*3 + 1*6).
With my intuitive assumption those last 2 would be sorted the other way around. So there must be some more to the calculation of complexity. What am i missing?
Yes there is more to the calculation! I don’t have time to spell it out here but in brief: weighting paths to shapes by the frequency of their antecedents. The “bent-3” will be much more common in play than the “straight-3”, and that’s why the order of those two shapes are different from what you’d get in a simple weighting. In addition, there’s another factor which doesn’t appear in my calculations but which does appear in simulations: the straight-4 is more constrained by the edges of the board.