Periodic: A Game of the Elements Review

"The job that takes me out of the house every morning (and funds my board gaming hobby) is 'analytical chemist'. This means I spend my day running fancily named instruments and explaining to other people what the numbers or graphs they spit out mean. In order to understand this stuff myself, a pretty significant chunk of my life from college onwards has involved using or referencing a periodic table. Reciting the noble gases in order"

"Periodic: A Game of the Elements is the literal melding of my job and hobby. How could I resist? The game plays 2-5, and I am predominantly a solo player. Lucky for me, one of my colleagues also couldn't resist. So what happened when an analytical chemist, a PhD metallurgist, and her husband sat down to research the elements? You have to read on to find out."

Periodic: A Game of the Elements uses the periodic table as a movement grid for 2–5 players with solo play viable. Movement follows five scientifically accurate trends: increasing or decreasing atomic number, increasing ionization energy (up and to the right), increasing atomic radii (down and right), increasing atomic mass (down and left), and decreasing atomic mass (up and left). Each movement can be one to five spaces and involves spending or gaining energy. Four goal-card stacks present open objectives and place goal tokens on specific elements. Players research elements by landing on them and placing research cubes; completing all elements on a goal card yields that card for endgame points. Components include a flask player marker, research cubes, and molecule goal tokens.

Read at Board Game Quest