4 hours ago
S3E05.6 - Microcosm Creator Interview (bonus)
#Microcosm #Micobiology #MicrobialEcology #NutrientCycling #BoardGames #Science
Summary
As the last(?) entry in our surprisingly large amount of content in our summer "break", we have a short and sweet creator interview with Dr. Fatima Foflonker about her newly released game, Microcosm. This interview was grabbed by Brian at Momocon (Atlanta), and covers a quick introduction to nutrient cycling, the importance of microbes, and how she brought this pet pandemic project to reality. So settle in for a quick field interview, and we'll see you again at the end of July!
Timestamps
- 00:00 Introductions
- 00:54 Nutrient cycling
- 02:22 Microcosm origins & play
- 06:04 Living room or classroom?
- 07:20 Wrap-up
Links
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This episode of Gaming with Science™ was produced with the help of the University of Georgia and is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
Splash image courtesy of Microcosm Games
Full Transcript
(Some platforms truncate the transcript due to length restrictions. If so, you can always find the full transcript on https://www.gamingwithscience.net/ )
Brian 0:01
Brian, hello, and welcome to the Gaming with Science podcast, where we talk about the science behind some of your favorite games. Hey, welcome back to Gaming with Science. This is Narrator Brian, and I was able to do a field interview with the creator of Microcosm, it was my first time using our field recorder, so I apologize for any audio hiccups. Thank you. Enjoy. Hey, this is Brian here at Momocon 2026 with the designer of Microcosm, which is a very cool game about bacteria, environmental bacteria. Could you introduce yourself?
Fatima 0:38
Hi, I'm Fatima. I'm a assistant professor at Clark Atlanta University. I teach microbiology. My research is in bioinformatics, but I do have a strong background in environmental microbiology. My PhD was from an environmentally focused program at Rutgers, and I decided to make this game about biogeochemical cycling. It gives you insights into all the microbes around us that are involved in helping to complete the cycling of chemicals in the environment that are constantly working, and we don't see them.
Brian 1:19
So, see, we learned about the water cycle, obviously, and I think maybe we learn a little bit about the carbon cycle. Certainly, we're talking about it more, but all of those elements have to get cycled in the environment, right? All that's driven by really by microbes and largely by bacteria.
Fatima 1:34
Yeah, that's true. So, a large part of these biogeochemical cycles are microbial. In the game, we have carbon, the carbon cycle, iron cycle, nitrogen cycle, and sulfur cycle. No phosphorus cycle yet, maybe for an expansion, maybe for an expansion. Yeah, the phosphorus expansion. And there's also a solo mode where you can play against the non-microbial elements that are cycling chemicals.
Brian 2:01
Tell me the story of Microcosm.
Fatima 2:02
Yeah, sure. So this is kind of my pandemic project. I had a
Brian 2:08
very common.
Fatima 2:09
yeah had a lot of time on my hands. People at the time, you know, they were talking about how bacteria, viruses, you know, how scared they were of them, and I was just thinking, what about the good bacteria? There's so many of them.
Brian 2:22
Just started as your pandemic project, but it's 2026 So, tell us about the story of designing Microcosm.
Fatima 2:29
Yeah, so it has been a long process. I started out just very basic on an Excel sheet with just a giant list of microbes I thought were cool.
Brian 2:41
This was like a personal love list of microbes?
Fatima 2:43
I was personal love list of microbes, you know. The game developed from there, and honestly, the last I don't know, four years or so after you get the art working and the basic, the core gameplay going, it's been a lot of just balancing.
Brian 2:58
Do you work with a design group here in Atlanta,
Fatima 3:01
so I'm part of the Georgia Game Designers Association, but as a designer, I've done most of the work. I do have an artist Tristam Rossin who did the artwork.
Brian 3:14
Are they also a microbe nerd?
Fatima 3:17
No, they're not at all.
Brian 3:19
What about now that they've done all this,
Fatima 3:21
I'm not sure, actually.
Brian 3:23
So, yeah, tell me about the game.
Fatima 3:25
Yeah, so the game is set up with a couple different tiles, biome tiles. They each have different chemicals that are available in the environment, and your main action is you're trying to play one of 75 unique and scientifically accurate microbes into the environment to try to convert chemicals into different forms, so the idea is firstly you got to find a place where the microbe can survive, so it has to have a trait that matches the environment, for example, if your microbe is halo-tolerant, it can survive in a salty environment. Then you have to find a chemical that matches what the microbe can consume, and the microbe will convert it into a different form. Someone could play off of your card and then take that chemical back to the form in the environment, and that's completing one cycle, so that's the basic game loop. There's also some interesting doubling time mechanics, so if no one plays on your card at the end of the round, your resources double, so this represents the exponential growth of bacteria in the environment, so you're really trying to maximize your resources before closing the cycle and scoring points. It's also a little bit of a deck builder, so once you complete a cycle, you get to pick up a mutation from the environment, add it to your card, and build up your deck.
Brian 4:57
You can outstrip the resources of your environment, and that's bad, right? So, how does that work?
Fatima 5:03
Yeah, so if you double your resources too many times, you're going to trigger environmental collapse. So, this represents when there's too many organisms competing for the same resources in the environment, the environment will collapse in the game, and you take out that tile, you take out any cards on that tile, and you replace it with a new tile.
Brian 5:27
What are some of your favorite bacteria in the game?
Fatima 5:30
Well, I really like Pyrococcus abyssi, that's gonna be our mascot. We're actually getting a giant microbe, like a custom giant microbe.
Brian 5:31
Oh, very cool.
Fatima 5:34
Yeah.
Brian 5:35
Why Pyrococcus? So, pyrococcus.. let's see.. pyro fire. So, definitely a thermo-tolerant or a thermophilic organism. What's the species name?
Fatima 5:53
Yeah, so Pyrococcus abyssi. So, that gives you a clue. So, abyss is where it comes from, so it lives in the deep sea hydrothermal vents.
Brian 6:04
Do you intend to use Microcosm in your classes, or is this mostly for the living room, or is it for both?
Fatima 6:10
Yeah, I would say both. I'm teaching college-level microbiology courses, and I definitely want to incorporate the cards as a learning tool to help the students recognize, you know, which bacteria are involved in which biogeochemical cycles. There's ways you can simplify the game and play it at a level for middle schoolers, high schoolers. I'm also going to include, like, teachers' lessons plans on my website to help incorporate that into the classroom as well.
Brian 6:42
Is there a mechanic that you wanted to have in the game, but you ended up dropping?
Fatima 6:47
So, as the, as we go through the rounds, the board kind of evolves, and we swap out some of the starter tiles for more advanced tiles, and I have this very complicated way of deciding what's the best optimal tiles to swap out, but it got complicated, and there was a giant flow chart to help you decide, and so I scrapped it, and right now I've got a round counter, and whichever tile the cube on the round counter is closest to that, that's the tile that gets swapped out. So it's streamlined, it's simplified, probably better for play.
Brian 7:20
Do you have a favorite game? Does necessarily need to be a board game or a science game
Fatima 7:24
I do have a very favorite. It's Terraforming Mars.
Brian 7:29
Oh, good choice
Fatima 7:29
Yeah, there's just so many options. It's like resource management game. I think you know, I've definitely drawn some inspiration from that and some inspiration from Wingspan, because Wingspan, you know, every card has a beautifully illustrated bird, and I really wanted to give every microbe its own
Brian 7:46
It due?
Fatima 7:46
Yeah,
Brian 7:48
very cool. Okay, where can our listeners find out about microcosm?
Fatima 7:54
Yeah, so microcosm, you can go to microcosm/games.com for more information. We are launching on Game Found in July this summer, so if you go to our website, it'll link you to our Game Found as well, and you can follow for an update on when the campaign launches.
Brian 8:14
All right. Well, listeners, keep an eye out for Microcosm. I imagine we're going to try to time the release of this episode so it will line up with the release, and with that, have a great month, and great games, and have fun playing dice with the universe. See ya.
Brian 8:26
This has been the Gaming with Science podcast. Copyright 2026 Listeners are free to reuse this recording for any non-commercial purpose, as long as credit is given to Gaming with Science. This podcast is produced with support from the University of Georgia. All opinions are those of the hosts, and do not imply endorsement by the sponsors. If you wish to purchase any of the games that we talked about, we encourage you to do so through your friendly local game store. Thank you, and have fun playing dice with the universe.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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