The Periodic Table: The Game

The periodic table’s highly ordered structure makes it seem like the playing field for a strategy board game. With this Kickstarter project, that’s exactly what it becomes.

Update: When I originally published this, I mentioned that I had no connection with the people creating this game. During the course of this Kickstarter, that actually changed! I responded to a request for backers to write a “Behind the Science of the Periodic Table” booklet that’s included with the game. Alas, pretty much none of my original copy wound up in the final product, but if you purchase this game and take a look, you will see T. R. Appleton in that pamphlet’s credits.

When I’m not producing this podcast, I really enjoy tabletop gaming. For the past however-many years, Kickstarter has been a real boon to the hobby, allowing enthusiastic amateurs to publish exciting ideas that would probably never have been brought to market otherwise.

So I was quite delighted to discover a new project from Genius Games called Periodic: A Game Of The Elements. With a focus on teaching accurate science, the game pits 2-5 players against each other in a competition to discover elements and periodic trends to score the most points in a German-style board game. Their video explains a little more:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/geniusgames/periodic-a-game-of-the-elements?ref=profile_starred#

I’d like to highlight that I don’t run ads on the podcast or blog, and I don’t have any connection to Genius Games. This just looks like a pretty cool project that, if you’re reading this post, I genuinely think you might also get a kick out of it!

Genius Games seem to have produced a half-dozen other board games via successful Kickstarter campaigns as well, including a few others with a chemical focus. I’m not too surprised! The study of chemistry is dominated by a handful of simple rules that can be mixed to create incredible complexity, which seems like a model that lends itself quite well to board games. You can find out more on their website.

If you decide to back the project, maybe let ’em know how you found out about it in their comments!