NewsModernBoardgames8th Oct 2026

ARCTICA: Gears, Wildlife and a Changing Arctic

This Way's latest strategy game sees players trying to grow animal population and biodiversity across the Arctic.

AngusA8th Oct 2026

Boardgame components on a white table: Arctic wildlife cards showing fish, seals, whales, and birds; a circular game board with a blue Arctic map; hexagonal tiles with animal icons; and small circular tokens in blue, green, and purple. Central artwork depicts a blue whale.

ARCTICA is a card-driven boardgame about developing your ecosystem and allowing your wildlife to colonise new territories. Grow your Arctic animal populations, build up their abilities, place them across the shared map to gain control of vraious regions, and aim to score the most Biodiversity points by the end of the game. Designed by Remi Mathieu and Sams, and illustrated by Chirstine Aubertin, the game is for 1-4 players, ages 10+, with a plying time of about 75 minutes.

The setting is the real Arctic, represented as a shared map where players compete to develop animal populations to gain Biodiversity points. The game includes 160 illustrated cards, divided between marine mammals, land mammals, invertebrates, birds and fish. Each card has its own ability with players building two columns of cards next to their individual player boards. Activating of reproducing an animal at the top of a column sends that card to the bottom, creating a nice card-engine mechanic.

Each player has a rather novel gear-driven player board, which includes some cool looks rotating cogs, which form the Generation Wheel. When you play a fauna cards it adds an animal token to either a short or long generation wheel. As the wheel turns it carries the token with it, until the point is reached where the token is ready to placed on the map.

The active player chooses and rotates one of the two action wheel, taking both actions it allows. Simultaneously everyone else takes one of those actions, thus giving the game little player donwtime as everyone is involved even when it is not their turn. At the end of each round as event triggers a majority check and adds a tile that might reshape part of the map, with examples inlcuding tourism, a container ship or an oil spill. These changes can create new opportunities, or restrict movement, in future turns.

ARCTICA is a game that I think would appeal to gamers who enjoy games such as Terraforming Mars, Wingspan, Ark Nova and Earth.

The game is currently raising funds on Gamefound, with the Standard Edition at €59 and a Collector Edition at €119. This Way have had a mixed tracked record with fulfiment targets in the past, which they address on this campaign, saying they have been taking steps to improve timings and are aiming to havr ARCTICA out to backers in about 12-14 months time.