Elementeo review: Learn chemistry basics with a card game

Description:

This “experiment” is a little different than usual. We’ll take a break from the usual Science Lab experiment to give a quick review of Elementeo, a card game that can be used as an educational tool to introduce basic chemistry concepts. It’s one of those rare games with fun gameplay as well as education.

Equipment needed:

An Elementeo board game, available at http://www.elementeo.com

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

In addition to the comprehensive instruction book, the game contents are what you see here:

 

As the box says, Elementeo is intended for “Ages 9-99″. It actually works for children even younger, as long as they understand certain basic game-playing aspects. It’s intended for 2-6 players.

The skill level required is also adjustable: there are 5 different game variants. If you want to play the more difficult versions, those versions add complexity to the more simple games.

The core game, a part of each variant, is simple: each team (or each player) has a certain number of “electrons”. Your goal is to bring your opponent’s electron count to zero. The game variants and difficulty give you different ways of doing that. The cards themselves represent mystical, mythical creatures andtechniques fighting it out on a battlefield.

This is primarily a card-playing game, like the collectible card games for “Magic: The Gathering” or “Pokemon“. However, Elementeo isn’t collectable - you’re given everything you need to play all variants of the game.

The cards look like this:

As you read the text on the cards, you’ll see that some is “flavor text” - something funny or interesting to read about the card in question. But the rest of the cards’ contents is information. Some of this information is used to play the game. Some is information about the element or compound in question.

For those who don’t know chemistry, the Elementeo card game educates - it describes basic chemistry concepts from mixing elements to make compounds, to the fun of medieval alchemy and nuclear fusion. (Alchemy and fusion are the themes of the two most difficult game variants.)

For those who know chemistry, you’ll find the Elementeo card game pays exacting and interesting attention to detail. Examine the two cards pictured above. In the lower-left of each card, you’ll see a symbol representing that card’s “power”. Black rods joining the circles indicate a positive oxidation state, and white rods indicate a black oxidation state. There is little or no gameplay reason to have this information on the card. This is an indicator of the attention to detail and love of designing the game by Elementeo’s creator, Anshul Samar. He went out of his way to go beyond the gameplay and make the game interesting, going beyond the rulebook. This gives Elementeo additional enjoyment, education, and repeat playability.

As the game manual says, Elementeo is not meant to replace chemistry lessons or teaching materials, but hopefully will suppliment them in a fun way. At a meta-level, Elementeo also represents chemistry itself: it successfully combines the gameplay elements of education and fun. This compound is very satisfying.

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