Bios: Mesofauna is live (Mesofauna in a Megafauna world)
Update: Bios: Mesofauna is live on Kickstarter in a joint campaign with Galenus. You may pledge for a copy of the game, or combine it with Galenus.
Our preview post below was published on October 16.
Bios: Mesofauna is a 1-4 player area control game in which you play as an insect that mutates and adjusts in order to survive and dominate in an ever-changing environment. It can be played on its own or in combination with Bios: Megafauna, and it will launch on Kickstarter on October 20 along with Galenus.
Gameplay is largely similar to that of Bios: Megafauna but the more complex rules have been dropped in the hope of making Mesofauna more accessible. You begin the game by laying the continent tiles on the table, and placing a mother creeple in one of the biomes. On each turn, you will perform one action for each species in your roster. These actions are: Mutate, Promote, Speciate, Populate, Neoteny or Pass.
When you take the Mutate action, you will select a mutation card from the 'market', and add it to your species. The Promote action allows you to flip a mutation card from its unpromoted to the promoted side. With the Speciate action you can create a new species. The Populate and Disperse action lets you place a new creeple on the board (it disperses from the mother creeple) by following placement rules. The Neoteny action lets you discard a bassal organ from your species so that it doesn't go extinct when hit by a mutagen.
Whenever a creeple enters an already inhabited biome, a contest takes place that decides who eats who. If an event card shows up while refreshing the market, you have to resolve it (it is usually a shift in the environment e.g. craton collision or ice age).
In the solo mode, you play against an artificial opponent called the Queen Bee, and follow a series of if/then instructions for its activation.
Oh great. Now I've got this song in my head all day.
I heart creeples.