Ecosystem: Coral Reef. A Brilliant Biology Game for Homeschoolers.

Whenever someone comes into Brain Spice and asks how to teach a subject in their homeschooling program, I always recommend including as many games as possible.

…then I always follow it up with, “But don’t just get games because they say they teach that subject. Make sure the games are actually fun!”

Often, the games that teach a subject or skill best aren’t classified as “educational games”. They’re family games - and the learning is just a by-product of playing.

Those are my favourite kinds of homeschooling games.

Ecosystem: Coral Reef is a perfect example of this.

It’s a fun, card-laying, family game. But by playing, kids (and adults) will naturally end up with a much better understanding of how ecosystems work, how food chains interact, and why balance in nature is so important.

That paragraph might make it sound like a complex game… but don’t worry - it isn’t.

Ecosystem: Coral Reef is a very simple card-laying game. You could easily teach someone how to play in under a minute.

The goal is to create your very own coral reef - which is just a grid of 5×4 cards. Each card scores points, and the player with the most points at the end wins.

That’s it.

The only thing you really need to think about is which cards to include in your reef, and where to place them.

This is where it gets interesting…

The way it works is that everyone starts with a hand of ten cards. You choose one of those cards to place into your own reef, then pass the remaining cards to the next player - and you’ll receive the hand from the player on your other side.

You then choose one card from this new hand, place it into your reef, and pass the rest on.

You keep going around and around like this until everyone has completed their own unique reef - a 5×4 grid of 20 cards.

The only placement rule is that every new card has to be placed adjacent to an existing card in your reef (directly above, below or beside - not diagonally).

A full game only takes around 10-15 minutes.

And if you’re like me, while you’re playing, you might think you’re doing really well. 

…You might have heaps of fish.

…Or you’ve collected lots of sharks.

…Or maybe you’ve filled your reef with beautiful coral.

So now it’s time to score it. This is where you find out how you actually did.

Understanding the scoring system is also very straightforward. The scorecard takes you through what everything’s worth, step by step as you score your cards one by one.

First, you score the producers - the coral, plankton and krill.

You’ll probably do okay with those.

You’ll notice you get more points the more “producer” cards you have in your reef. And, of course, the coral needs to be on the bottom row to score.

Because a healthy reef needs plenty of producers.

And coral grows on the bottom of the reef.

…it seems as though the scoring might be starting to reflect what a real coral reef needs.

Interesting…

Then you move on to the “prey” (this is where you’ll find the fish)… and that’s when you realise just how important it was that you placed the fish near the producers, because the fish need producers nearby to score well.

Again, that’s exactly like a real coral reef.

Fish are great… but they can’t survive (or in this game… score) without producers.

Then you score the predators - the sharks, eels and whales. But they need fish or producers nearby to score well.

As you can imagine, this is where the understanding of an ecosystem really starts to make sense...

You realise you can’t just collect lots of one thing. Yes, an eel can give you big points - but only if it’s adjacent to coral and also near a fish, otherwise it’s worth nothing. And a whale can also give you big points - but only if you have lots of krill on your reef, otherwise it’s worth nothing.

The different parts of your reef actually need each other.

Pretty cool how this game subtly teaches that!

But… there’s one final twist.

After you’ve scored all three groups (producers, prey and predators), you take whichever of those scored the lowest… and you add that number onto your score a second time.

Which is really clever…

Because that’s when you realise that spending the whole game focusing on one type of really high scoring card wasn’t actually the best strategy after all.

That’s when you realise that the best strategy would have been to keep all three groups scoring as evenly as possible.

Just like a real ecosystem.

The healthiest ecosystem isn’t the one with a huge amount of just one thing.

It’s the one where everything works together.

This is what I mean when I say that games can help concepts make sense very quickly - and in a really memorable way. This whole “lesson” has happened in the space of about 15 minutes - and all while you’ve just been having fun playing a game!

And once the understanding has clicked, games are also great for reinforcing the learning too…

Because as you can imagine… once you score your first game, you’ll immediately see where you went wrong. And you’ll want to play again… cos you’ll know that this time, you can do better.

Then after the second game, you’ll score again… and again see where you could have done better.

So you’ll play again.

And again.

And again.

Each time, you’ll naturally start building healthier ecosystems because you understand how all the pieces fit together.

This is how, without feeling like an educational game whatsoever, it quietly teaches the idea that ecosystems rely on balance. Every part supports another part. Every part of an ecosystem is needed.

The game is simple enough to learn in under a minute.

And quick enough to play in 10-15 minutes.

It’s also very budget-friendly.

And it’s got a brilliant solo mode if you’d like to practise by yourself. (I really love the solo mode myself. I’ve been sitting down to play a game or two of this each night for the past week, just for fun. It feels like a thinky little puzzle.)

Also, just as an added bonus, the rulebook includes information about every marine creature featured on the cards if you’d like to learn even more. It’s not necessary to read it for the game, but it’s pretty cool that they include it!

Ecosystem: Coral Reef is a game I think every homeschooling family should have.

But you don’t need to be a homeschooling family to enjoy it…

Everyone will have fun with this game!

1–6 Players | 15–20 Min 

Complexity: Family Friendly

Ecosystem: Coral Reef is available in-store or online at Brain Spice…