Simple but highly appropriate for its straightforward educational purpose, Chemical Spill is a card game meant for high school students. Players draft a hand of element cards then assemble them in to molecules, along the way learning about covalent bonds, Lewis dot structures, and electron sub-shell configurations.
Based on Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Victory Point Games’ Nemo’s War is a solitaire adventure board game where the player, as Captain Nemo, pilots the Nautilus about the oceans’ depths. Exploration, scientific discovery, war, and anti-imperialism are the priorities from which the player may choose, and against which actions such as refitting the submarine, inciting local uprisings, and attacking surface ships are judged for victory points.
Empires: Galactic Rebellion from Eagle-Gryphon Games treats players to an epic-scale game set in conflict among the stars. A follow-up to Glen Drover’s Age of Empires, Galactic Rebellion incorporates development on economic, political, military, and technological fronts, as well as worker placement, in to gameplay. As a new feature, those workers are differentiated between rebels, scientists, troopers, smugglers, and diplomats, each of which is represented by a different miniature figure.
Calling it a “skill-building game”, Lone Shark’s The Ninth World is an adventure card game based on the Numenera RPG. Each player’s hand of cards represents their current set of skills. As better skills are developed, new cards replace old ones. Players then use the cards in bidding against each other to explore, collect relics, complete quests, and further improve their skills.
In CitiesUP, building is just the first step. Every structure, whether residential, commercial, or industrial, must be supplied with water and electricity. In return for that support, players are able to collect taxes for victory points. Field cards represent special events, including some natural disasters. And building out the city is market with vertical wooden cubes, so you get the image of a growing downtown as game progresses.