Biodio: Mediterranean Sea is a card game in which you dive beneath the surface and build your own underwater ecosystem. Each player has a game board with 20 spaces (a 5 × 4 grid), which they fill with organism cards over nine rounds. But it’s not just about laying down cards. Every organism has its own requirements: you can place a sardine straight away, but a dolphin or a sperm whale needs the right organisms in its row or column first. Just like in real nature.

During the game, you look for answers to questions like:
➤ Which organisms form the foundation of the marine ecosystem?
➤ What do large marine animals need to survive?
➤ How are different organisms connected to one another?
➤ How do you build the richest and most valuable ecosystem possible?

The rules are simple: each turn you get 3 actions (placing, replacing, moving or swapping organisms, or exchanging cards), yet the game offers surprising strategic depth. You score points for the variety of organisms in your ecosystem and for bonus cards you win during the game. Thanks to the random order of the cards, no two games are the same.

What’s inside:
➤ Over 200 cards with hand-drawn illustrations of real Mediterranean organisms (by Bianka Török)
➤ Organism names in Croatian printed right on the cards
➤ Five game modes: standard, quick, solo, team (2 vs 2) and cooperative
➤ Intuitive mechanics with no lengthy text on the cards

Biodio: Mediterranean Sea simulates how a marine ecosystem works. Players experience first-hand that large predators can’t exist without the whole web of organisms beneath them, and that species diversity makes an ecosystem more valuable.

While playing, players develop scientific thinking (understanding connections and dependencies within an ecosystem), knowledge of organisms (getting to know real species and their names), and strategic and logical planning. Depending on the variant, they also practise teamwork (cooperative and team modes) or independent work (solo mode).

The game also opens up follow-up reflection:

• Which organisms were most important for your ecosystem, and why?
• What would happen to the ecosystem if one species disappeared?
• Why is biodiversity important for the health of the sea?
• How do humans affect the Mediterranean ecosystem?

The selection of organisms and their relationships in the game was reviewed by animal behaviourist Ida Baranašić, and the organism names by experts from the Institute of Zoology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the Department of Biology and Environmental Studies at the Faculty of Education, Charles University. More than 25 teachers playtested the game and gave feedback.

The game was created by the design studio Lebo Mädveď in cooperation with Impact Games and OU Podum. This project was co-funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ programme (Youth sector).