Coexist Preview
Advert: this game was gifted by Matagot, this has not affected our preview in any way.
When Matagot pinged me an email about their latest game Coexist, asking whether I would like to preview it ahead of its Gamefound campaign, I said yes instantly. At that point there was very little about it online, but the box and card art had me super intrigued. Fortunately for you, this preview is on the internet, so you can find out more before committing to pledging!
One last thing before you go further, just be aware that I’ve played and photographed a prototype, it seems pretty much finished but components, gameplay and the like may change.
More about the game
Coexist is largely a resource management game for two to four players designed by first-time designers Karim Joulak and Sylvain Phillippon. The stunning artwork I mentioned is by a French street artist A-MO. Their murals can be seen around their home-town of Bordeaux and gives the game a unique and fresh appearance.
Matagot have also pledged a portion of the game’s profits to be donated to HISA, an organisation dedicated to preserving biodiversity in France and around the world. This ties in nicely with the overall theme of the game. Over several turns you will be assigning specialist caretakers to animals and attempting to release them into the wild. The game ends when any player releases five animals, or if the draw deck is depleted.
On your turn there are three types of action you can take. The first is to interact with the shared market, either to gather caretaker tokens or reserve at least one animal card. The second type of action is to interact with your own board. This has five slots for cards and resources. Even with three of the same type of resource being able to be in the same slot, the board gets tight very quickly!
When interacting with your player board you can assign caretaker tokens to the relevant animal, or swap them between animals, discard an animal for resources, or release an animal into the world. These actions can be done as many times as you like and in any order.
The final action is the trading action. This allows some conversion for more common resources to be turned into scarcer ones or vice versa.
Final thoughts on Coexist
For a board game that largely revolves around resource management, I am surprised how tricky it can be to gather resources! Some animal cards will give resources, or resource conversion, as an ongoing benefit and these are well worth obtaining. Generally though it is quite tight, especially without the ability to build a big engine. That will either be something you like, because of the quicker play time with a race to five cards, or something that may not appeal.
While not the same, it certainly has vibes of Century, In the Footsteps of Marie Curie and Little Factory about it. What sets Coexist apart, is the fresh aesthetics. The artwork in this game is superb!
Follow the campaign here: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/matagot/coexist
