Description

Players compete to balance exploitation and conservation in an effort to save endangered species from the brink of extinction. To do this, players must accumulate money through the collection and selling of resources in order to then buy and conserve land. To collect resources, players must exploit the land, and potentially push species to extinction. Players take the role of advisers to the Minister for the Environment - choosing when to approve requests for resource projects (collecting resources for doing so) and choosing which companies to give the approved contracts to (owned by other players, or themselves - who also collect resources). The role of the Minister is to conserve species, therefore the adviser that enables the best conservation of species wins the game! The game ends when either 15 species are saved, or 6 are made extinct.

The setup for the game is always randomized: The lands are arranged at random, in addition to the location of the endangered species; The resource cost to improve the efficiency of exploited lands is randomized; and the resource cost to move species, create habitat bridges and recycle waste is also randomized.

The board consists of 4 separate land types (Plains, Oceans, Mountains, Forests) with 20 endangered species. Players compete to collect 6 different resource types: Food (from Plains), Oil (from Oceans), Metal (from Mountains), Wood (from Forests), Electricity (from Electricity plants - built anywhere) and People (from Cities - built anywhere). They do this by buying and exploiting the land: spreading out from a starting land to adjacent land tiles. The cost of land grows as more of it is exploited. Players must also pay the cost of Waste that is generated by exploiting lands and extracting resources.

A turn has two phases. Phase 1 involves: Approving resource projects (3 available each turn, drawn from a deck), Buying land, Buying/Selling resources, Upgrading lands and/or performing Acts of Conservation (building habitat bridges, relocating species, recycling waste). Phase 2 involves: Recycling waste at Recycling plants (built anywhere) and Paying Waste dues (mandatory).

—description from the designer