It’s not often a board game is novel, beautiful, and educational! Diatoms hits on all points. It’s a tile-placement and pattern-making game where players make mosaics out of small tiles of different shapes and colors. The tiles represent diatoms, which are microscopic algae of different shapes and sizes. In the Victorian era, diatoms were arranged into kaleidoscopic displays on microscope slides, and Diatoms lets you experience 19th-century natural history. People gathered diatoms and arranged them on slides for the pleasure of looking at the huge variety of one-celled organisms.
How does it work as a game? Some parts work very well. Diatoms is published by Ludoliminal and was designed by Sabrina Culyba with illustration by Nim Ben-Reuven. The game is for 1-4 players and plays in 15-30 minutes.
Gameplay Overview:
To play the game, players take a player board and a couple of large hexagonal tiles representing the “pond.” The pond is seeded with two tiles. Players take turns adding a tile to the pond by matching color segments to an existing area. Then they collect diatoms created from each 3-tile intersection. Significantly, creating multiple intersections from one tile allows a player to collect extra diatoms.
Once the player has collected their new diatoms, they place them around the concentric circles on their player board, attempting to make symmetrical arrangements by color and shape.
Play continues until all the hex tiles are laid on the pond area.
Players calculate their final score by counting pairs of matched diatoms, totals of colors used, and total variety of shapes in each concentric circle. Other goals are available, representing visiting judges who are seeking certain patterns or types of diatoms.
Game Experience:
The overall look of this game is impressive, with detailed foil printing on the box and the diatom tiles. The black player boards highlight the colorful diatom patterns. The tiles for the diatoms are in five shapes and five colors. Keeping with the theme, Diatom tiles are stored in clear petri dish holders. The dual layer player boards are heavy-weight and make striking backdrops for the diatoms. The diatom tiles also feature intricate patterns that are color-keyed.
The rules of the game are easy to grasp, although you may need to play once or twice to be able to optimize scoring. The game plays very fast, and you can easily knock out two games in an hour.
There are some fun challenges on the guest judges’ cards. As always in tile-laying games, there are tradeoffs and decisions made on the fly. One difficulty is laying your hex tiles in the pond to find your diatoms. Sometimes, the exact color match you seek is simply not available in the tile pond.
You are free to decide where to lay your diatoms on your board as you weigh competing scoring rules. Diatoms can’t be moved once placed, so there’s no editing your board late game to improve its symmetry.
One of the disappointments for me was that the game is short, and many unpaired tiles will exist on your board, ruining some of the beauty. I hadn’t considered that I was a completist before playing Diatoms. The game is pitched as reenacting an old art form of arranging diatoms on slides to make symmetrical patterns, and completing only a handful of patterns with lots of empty spaces was frustrating to me.
Interestingly, the solo variant performs better at this; you are completing “commissions,” which require you to build a pattern, so achieving your commission goal always produces a completed pattern.
Final Thoughts:
Diatoms is a light game, almost more activity than a game. Player interaction is limited to sharing the tile building of the “algae pond.” Puzzle fans will enjoy Diatoms, but the puzzles will always be somewhat incomplete.
Final Score: 3.5 Stars – A quick-playing, beautiful puzzle game
Hits:
• Striking, dramatic art
• Easy teach, fast play
• Hard decisions on placement for maximum points
Misses:
• Almost a solo activity with minimal player interaction
• Not for the completist
Source: Board Game Quest
