Algae, Inc. Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Departments
• Aim of the Game
• Game Materials
• Player Setup
• Map Board Setup
• Core Concepts
  • Resources
  • Exchanging Resources
  • Contracts
  • Side Boards
  • Department Boards
  • Byproducts
• Gameplay
  • 1. Monday Morning
  • 2. Work Week
  • 3. Weekend
• End of the Game
• Solo Mode

Departments

Algae, Inc. exports four kinds of algae-based products, one per Department board in the game:

• Biofuel — algae rich in lipids can be processed into a renewable alternative to fossil fuel. The idea goes back to research on chlorella after the Second World War, though the rulebook notes that turning it into a viable large-scale industry is still considered a distant goal.
• Bioplastics — algae are being investigated as a sustainable raw material for plastics that biodegrade far faster than petroleum-based ones, an area of research that has picked up in recent years.
• Cosmetics — algae have a long history in skincare, and modern extracts are valued in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals for antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and moisturizing properties.
• Food — algae are a dense source of nutrients for people and animals. Nori is the best-known food alga; Spirulina and Chlorella are widely used microalgae in supplements and functional foods, and large-scale algae farming is seen as a promising way to help address world food security.

Aim of the Game

Each player runs one department of the same company, Algae Inc., producing one of the four algae-based product lines and exporting it to cities across Europe. Success means running your department efficiently: hiring good staff (Operators to expand output, Engineers to improve your production line, and Scientists to research upgrades), while balancing long-term investment against short-term production and sales. Whoever manages their department most efficiently at the end of the game is crowned "Department of the Month" and wins.

Game Materials

The box contains a central Map board of Europe, an Action board (built from board frames and action strips), and for each of the 4 possible departments a double-layered Department board and a double-layered Side board, along with that department's Science tiles, Engineering tiles, Crossover tiles, Contract cards and Export tiles (each department's components share a printed department icon on their back so they can be kept separate).

Also included: staff tiles and meeples for Operators, Engineers and Scientists in each of the 4 player colors (yellow, white, blue, purple), player VP discs, export discs and milestone markers, upgrade tiles, City Demand tokens (regular and capital), City Bonus tokens, a round marker and start player token, euro coins and bills, freelance engineer tokens, market value tokens, wild action tokens and choice action tokens, capacity markers, byproduct tanks, milestone tiles, round bonus tiles, weekend bonus board strips, algae cubes, science inlays, the rulebook and one department guide per department.

Player Setup

1. Each player takes all tokens and markers in their player color: 1 worker meeple, 10 export discs, 10 milestone markers, 1 science marker, 1 energy marker and 1 VP disc.
2. Each player chooses one Department board — Cosmetics, Biofuel, Bioplastics or Food. In a 2-player game, the two chosen departments cannot share the same type of byproduct: pick one of Cosmetics/Biofuel plus one of Bioplastics/Food.
3. Each player also takes the matching Operator Upgrade tile and Scientist Upgrade tile, and every component that shares their department's icon: the Side board, all Science and Engineering tiles for that department, the 4 Crossover tiles, the 8 Contract cards and the 10 Export tiles.
4. Pick a starting player and give them the start player token.
5. Set your Department board in front of you with your Side board to its right.
6. Place your department's Science tiles face-up on the marked Science tile spots on your Department board, and your Engineering tiles and Crossover tiles face-up on the matching spots on your Side board. A couple of Engineering tile types are stacked two tiles deep; place the tile marked for the back position first, then the one marked for the front on top.
7. Put your Operator and Scientist Upgrade tiles next to the matching teams on your board, starting side face up.
8. Take 2 algae cubes from the general supply and place them in the one algae storage space available on your Department board at the start of the game.
9. Place your science marker on space "0" of your science track.
10. Place your 10 double action tiles on their marked spaces on your Side board, each topped with an export disc and a milestone marker.
11. Shuffle your 8 Contract cards and draw 3, returning the rest to the box. Layer the 3 drawn cards under your Side board in an order of your choosing — middle card first, then the other two overlapping only its top and bottom edges — so that one end-scoring option, one contract-export option and one permanent ability are all visible at once.

Once you're comfortable with setup, you can optionally use the randomized double-sided Side board insert for extra variety — choose a side and slot it into the recess in the middle of your Side board.

Map Board Setup

1. Place the Map board in the middle of the table.
2. Randomly place the 8 capital city demand tokens on the map's 8 capital cities. (For a game with new players, it's recommended to place the value-2 capital token on Berlin and require the very first export of the game to go there.)
3. Randomly place the 16 regular city demand tokens on the remaining cities.
4. Shuffle the 36 city bonus tokens and randomly deal 24 of them, one per city, across the map.
5. Make one face-up token pool per player plus one extra. Each pool gets one random staff tile and two random city bonus tokens (drawn from the 12 left over). In reverse player order (starting to the right of the starting player, going counterclockwise), each player picks one pool, places its staff tile on their Department board, and immediately takes the bonus (a choice action token) shown on it. Put the unused staff tiles into a general supply.
6. Randomly draw 2 milestone tiles of each color and place them face-down-side-of-your-choice on their spaces on the central board; return the other 5 to the box.
7. Build a general supply of freelance engineers, market value tokens, wild action tokens, choice action tokens and euro coins/bills.
8. In a 2-player game, place the 2 byproduct tanks on the board over the printed tank spots. In a 3-player game, use only the tank matching the department that is not in play. In a 4-player game, the tank tiles aren't used at all.
9. Fill the bottom two rows of every byproduct grid with algae cubes.
10. Put a capacity marker on value 4 for every algae tank and fill each with 4 algae cubes.
11. Put the remaining algae cubes into the general supply.
12. Each player sets their energy marker on the middle of the energy track.
13. Each player sets their VP marker on space "0" of the VP track.

Core Concepts

Resources

The game's resources are euros, market value, freelance engineers and science points. Question mark tokens and wild action tokens exist too, but they are not counted as resources.

Science points are the only resource tracked on a limited track — capped at 10. Any science points you would gain beyond 10 are simply lost, including ones granted by a bonus token that you cannot fully place on the track; a science-point bonus you can't fully mark is lost outright, not banked.

Most single-use bonus tokens that enter the game as it progresses behave just like the double-sided ones already on the board. Every resource except science points is treated as unlimited in supply.

Exchanging Resources

Whenever you owe a payment (never at other times), you may freely trade between euros, science points, market value and freelance-engineer tokens (and question mark tokens) at a rate of 2-for-1. You can also trade 3 resources and/or question mark tokens for 1 wild action token, if you want one to change what action you're about to take.

Contracts

Each of your 3 drawn Contract cards is split into three usable parts: an end-game scoring condition, a contract export option, and a permanent ability. Layering the cards during setup lets you see one of each at a time.

A contract export is performed as part of a normal export action, following the normal export rules except that it costs no transport fee — you place your export disc on the Contract card instead of on the map, and get whatever immediate benefit the card shows. However, an export disc placed on a contract does not count toward any Milestone.

Side Boards

Much of the game is about moving Engineering tiles off your Side board and onto your Department board (by activating your Engineers), and moving Science tiles the other way, from your Department board onto your Side board (by activating your Scientists) — because the game is likely too short to fully upgrade an entire Department board, it's usually best to focus on just one or two production paths.

Your Side board has three areas:

1. On the left, your export discs and milestone markers sit on top of your double action tiles. Exporting moves an export disc (and sometimes a milestone marker) to the map, which grants extra income during the Monday Morning phase — but if you instead spend a double action tile for an extra action, it's removed from the game and stops generating that income.
2. In the center, at the start of the game, sit all your Engineer tiles. Your running science point total is tracked along the top of the board.
3. On the right you'll find the standard resource exchange rate, a slot to hold your Contract cards, and a summary of end-game scoring.

Science tiles start out placed on your Department board; removing one (via a Scientist activation) reveals whatever upgrade or bonus was underneath, and the removed tile goes face-down onto your Side board. If removing a tile uncovers one or more bonuses, you take (and may immediately use) them right away. The available bonuses include: 1 or 2 energy; 1 choice action token; 1 wild action token; 1 or 2 byproducts (placed in a byproduct tank of your choice, earning the printed coins — these particular byproducts cannot be burned for energy); 1 VP per removed milestone marker still sitting on a double action tile on your Side board; your Operator income immediately (1 algae cube per Operator, +2 more if upgraded); your Engineer income immediately (1 algae movement per Engineer, +2 more if upgraded); or your Scientist income immediately (1 science point per Scientist, +2 more if upgraded). At game end, you score 1 VP per tile in your largest connected group of Science tiles (including flipped Crossover tiles) on your Side board.

Engineering tiles start on your Side board; when you build one (again, via an Engineer activation), it moves onto your Department board where it improves production, freeing space on your Side board for a future Science tile. Crossover tiles work similarly but can be flipped instead — moving one off your Side board via an Engineer activation flips it from its Engineer face to its Science face, after which you can later place it back onto your Side board (as a Science tile) with a Scientist activation. Taking a Crossover tile costs the same as taking an Engineering tile; placing a flipped Crossover tile costs the same as placing a Science tile.

Department Boards

Your Department board represents your product's production line, divided into zones:

1. Algae storage — four species-specific storage areas fed from the algae tanks on the map. You can only take a species you have storage space for.
2. Machine A — where you'll typically lose some algae cubes as part of production; these usually turn into byproducts, which you can store in the matching byproduct tank for money or convert into energy.
3. Machine B — where some production lines let you add byproducts from elsewhere back into your production for extra output.
4. Machine C — similarly, some production lines let you add byproducts here before cubes finish becoming saleable product.
5. Dispatch — where finished cubes sit, ready to be exported.

Each Department board has 3 Algae Storage upgrade tiles; removing one opens up a new storage area for that species, and you must immediately bump that species' algae tank capacity on the map up by one step (capacity is also easy to check whenever tanks are refilled during the Weekend phase).

Your board's black-and-yellow conveyor belts move algae cubes normally; black-and-green conveyor belts only activate as part of a Machine activation — during any other movement (e.g. the income phase) only the black-and-yellow belts may be used. Activating a Machine lets all conveyor belts in that Machine's zone move.

Byproducts

Production generates two kinds of byproduct — biomass and bio-oil — and whichever one your board doesn't directly produce, you can typically recycle back in elsewhere. Byproducts are useful two ways: they're a source of energy or money when Machine A strips cubes out of your line, and several Department boards let you feed byproducts back into their production for extra output.

Gameplay

The game runs for 4 rounds ("weeks"). Each week has 3 phases, shown along the bottom of your Department board:

1. Monday Morning — everyone collects income.
2. Work Week — players take turns, one per work day, 5 turns per week.
3. Weekend — players may collect a weekend bonus depending on their energy level, followed by cleanup.

1. Monday Morning

Every round, including the first, each player collects income and resolves the steps printed on their Department board (the Food board adds a step where unexported food spoils; the Biofuel board adds an optional refining step — see each department's reference sheet for details).

Standard income each Monday Morning:

• €2, plus €1 per removed export disc on your Side board.
• 1 VP per removed milestone marker on your Side board. (The euro and VP amounts are the ones printed on your Side board's double action tiles; once a double action tile is used this way it's removed from the Side board and stops paying out.)
• 1 new algae cube per Operator on your Department board, placed into your available storage by species — you only have storage for one species at the very start of the game, and more Storage tile removals open up more species. If you can't find storage for a cube of the species you want, you simply can't take it. This step happens in player order; if a tank is empty, you may instead buy cubes from the general supply for €1 each.
• 1 algae cube movement per Engineer on your Department board, along black-and-yellow belts only (green belts don't trigger during this phase). Moving cubes here can speed up your line and dodge costs, but can also make you miss a byproduct opportunity further down the line, so choose your moves with care. This and the remaining steps can be done simultaneously by all players.
• 1 science point per Scientist on your Department board, capped at 10 as always.

Activating your Operators, Engineers or Scientists during this phase does not trigger the bonus +2 from an income upgrade — the upgrade only applies when you activate that team as an action during the Work Week.

Each Department board also has 3 income-upgrade Science tiles (removable via a Scientist action) that permanently boost Monday Morning income once removed: the Operators upgrade adds 2 extra algae cubes, the Engineers upgrade adds 2 extra algae movements, and the Scientists upgrade adds 2 extra science points — again, all only during Monday Morning income, and again, not when you activate those teams as a Work Week action.

2. Work Week

Starting with the starting player and going clockwise, each player takes 5 turns (one per work day). Each turn has two steps:

a) Move your worker. On your very first turn of the round you may place your worker on any spot of the bottom action strip; after that you must move it forward to a connected spot on the next action strip. Multiple workers can share a spot.

b) Perform your action(s). You may perform the action shown at your worker's new spot (possibly changed with a choice or wild action token — see below), or instead take one choice action token, €1, or 1 algae cube, or move 1 algae cube along your production line; any of these still counts as an action, so you can also spend a double action tile afterward. You may then spend one unlocked double action tile to repeat your action (also modifiable with a choice/wild action token).

There are 3 action types, several of which break down into 4 sub-choices:

• A. Activate a Team — any team, or specifically Operators, Engineers, or Scientists.
• B. Activate a Machine — any machine, or specifically Machine A, B, or C.
• C. Recruit a Staff Member

A choice action token lets you switch which team or machine you activate (e.g. an Operator-activation spot becomes an Engineer or Scientist activation instead), but it cannot change the action's type — you can't turn a Production action into a Team activation or vice versa that way. A wild action token can change your action into any other action or sub-action, including switching between the three main types.

Activate a Team. Activating a team activates every member of that team at once for the same task — even though Operators and Scientists each offer two possible tasks, you may only pick one per activation.

Activate Operators — either:

• Take new algae cubes, up to the number of Operators you have (not boosted by the income upgrade outside Monday Morning), storing each by species as storage allows. If a tank is empty, buy from the general supply at €1 each.
• Or export. You may export your finished products (cubes that have reached the end of your production line) to any city on the map you haven't already exported to. All players share the same company, so a city another player has already reached costs you nothing extra; otherwise transport cost depends on distance from the nearest export disc anywhere on the map: €1 for an adjacent city, €3 for two steps away, €6 for three steps away — beyond three steps is off-limits unless a contract says otherwise. Transport costs go to the general supply. The very first export of the game (by anyone) is free of transport cost regardless of distance (or, in the beginner setup, must go to Berlin). You can remove the Transport Cost Science tile (via a Scientist activation) to permanently cut future transport costs to €0/€1/€3 for distance 1/2/3. To export to a city, you must meet or exceed its printed demand value using the combined market value of the cubes you spend (excess market value is wasted); you may spend market value tokens to boost a cube's value, even from 0. When you export, place your topmost Side board export disc on the city; if it's your first disc there, also take the city's bonus token, usable immediately (even toward the same export). Stacking your disc on a city that already has other players' discs is fine. After each export, check whether you've reached any Milestones and claim the topmost Milestone marker(s) plus any printed VP. You may keep exporting to further cities in the same action, up to the number of Operators you have. Removing export discs/milestone markers may unlock double action tiles, usable immediately if you haven't already used one this turn. As a rule you can only export once per city, but if you somehow exhaust all 10 cities you've exported to, the export action stays available: re-exporting to an already-used city instead scores immediate VP equal to half that city's demand value, rounded up.
• You can also export directly to your Contract card, following the same rules but without any transport cost, placing your export disc there instead of on the map (this does not count toward Milestones).

Export bonus: any player who manages at least one export during Week 1, 2 or 3 receives that week's randomly-assigned Team upgrade once their Operator activation (including that export) is finished. The Operator upgrade lets future Operator activations take new cubes and export in the same action, from then on (not retroactively). The Engineer upgrade flips all 3 of your Machine capacity upgrade tiles even if still on your Side board. The Scientist upgrade lets future Scientist activations gain science points and place Science tiles in the same action, from then on.

Activate Engineers — take Engineering tiles (moving them to your Department board) and/or Crossover tiles (flipping them to their Science face and keeping them in reserve) from your Side board. Each Engineer gives 1 engineering point, and each freelance engineer token you spend for the activation adds another; spent tokens return to the supply. Each tile's engineering-point cost (0–3) is shown on the left of its column on your Side board. You may take tiles up to your Engineer count, provided you can pay for each. Most Engineering tiles have a single matching space on your Department board; where more than one matching space exists, you choose. Stacked-during-setup tiles are usually, but not always, placed in the same stacked order when built.

Activate Scientists — either:

• Gain 1 science point per Scientist (capped at 10, excess lost, not boosted outside Monday Morning).
• Or place Science tiles: remove a Science tile of your choice from your Department board and place it anywhere on your Side board (placing it face-down, blank side up, is a handy way to tell it apart from your Engineer tiles), or place a previously-flipped Crossover tile back onto your Side board. Placement cost (2–5 science points, shown to the left of the tile grid on your Side board) is paid immediately before placing; if a spot straddles two cost zones, pay the higher one. You may place up to your Scientist count, space and cost permitting. Immediately claim any bonus a newly placed tile covers. Removing a Science tile from an algae-storage space also bumps that species' general algae tank capacity up one step.

Activate a Machine. Activating a Machine lets you move algae cubes along its conveyor belts up to its listed capacity (which applies only to the black-and-yellow belts) — a Machine can only be activated if it already holds at least one cube on its left/input side. All conveyor belts (yellow and green) in that Machine's zone may move during the activation.

Black-and-green belts only ever activate during a Machine activation (never otherwise, e.g. not during Monday Morning cube movement), and normally only once per activation unless marked with an infinity symbol. There are three flavors: belts that piggyback on an active yellow belt (only trigger if at least one cube moves along the connected yellow belt); belts linked to a single algae storage space on a Machine's left side (trigger whenever that Machine is activated, e.g. to add byproducts, even into an otherwise-empty field, as long as cubes are moving elsewhere in the same Machine); and belts linking two storage spaces within a Machine (used to shuffle cubes around, often at a cost, and not limited by the Machine's yellow-belt capacity). One exception: on the Food board, certain green belts in Machine C also trigger off an A or B activation.

Activate Machine A — you'll typically lose one or more cubes to byproduct according to your board's printed table (upgrading the table gives you more control over how many cubes convert). For each cube that becomes byproduct, choose to either burn it for energy (raise your energy level one step per cube burned, returning the cube to the supply) or store it in the matching byproduct tank for the coins shown on that tank space.

Energy is tracked on the central energy track; your level determines how many weekend/end-game bonuses you're entitled to (0, 1 or 2). If you need to spend energy you don't have, you may instead pay €2 per point, without your marker actually entering negative territory. If you'd gain energy above the maximum, you instead score 1 VP per excess point, staying at the top of the scale.

Byproduct tanks fill from bottom to top; a full tank overflows into the other tank (you keep collecting the coins as you fill it). If both tanks are full, byproducts can only be burned for energy. An empty tank can still be "bought into" from the general supply at €1 per byproduct if you want to add byproducts to your production without having any stored.

Activate Machine B — move cubes from Machine B to Machine C, up to Machine B's capacity.

Activate Machine C — move cubes from Machine C into Dispatch (ready for export), up to Machine C's capacity.

Adding byproducts during a Machine B or C activation works in one of two ways. First, a byproduct added to a space on the Machine's left/input side (not directly onto a moving yellow belt) becomes an algae cube immediately and does count toward that Machine's movement capacity if later moved — it can never be added to an activate-able but currently empty Machine, only to an empty field of a Machine you are activating (which needs at least one cube on its left side to trigger the activation in the first place; once triggered, green belts can then fill an otherwise-empty field). Second, a byproduct added directly onto an already-moving yellow belt (or a field on the Machine's right/output side) also becomes an algae cube, but doesn't count toward that Machine's movement capacity, and can never be added to a belt with no cube already moving on it; moving cubes on other belts in the same Machine does not trigger green belts attached to yellow belts that are themselves empty.

Machine capacity upgrades are Engineer tiles placed (via an Engineer activation) on top of your Department board's Machines. Machines A, B and C all start at capacity 2 (i.e. 2 cubes per yellow-belt movement per activation); Engineer tiles raise this to 4 for Cosmetics or 3 for the other boards, and the Engineer Team upgrade (see Export bonus, above) lets you flip those same tiles for a further boost, up to 5 for Cosmetics or 4 elsewhere. The three capacity-upgrade tiles are interchangeable and can go on any Machine in any order.

Conveyor Belt Upgrade (Machines A and B only) — whenever you activate a Machine holding this tile, you gain 2 extra algae-cube movements to use in the next Machine (once your current Machine activation is finished): either move 2 cubes 1 step, or 1 cube 2 steps, within that next Machine. This bonus movement does not itself count as activating that next Machine, so its green belts stay dormant unless you separately activate it.

Recruit a Staff Member. Each player has 3 staff teams (Operators, Engineers, Scientists), starting with one permanent member per team (printed on the board) plus one more gained during setup. More staff means more income and stronger team activations. To recruit, take any staff tile from the general supply, add it to the leftmost open space in the matching row of your roster, and pay the cost shown above that column; then take the bonus token and/or score the VP shown where the new tile landed.

3. Weekend

Once every worker has reached the final action strip and everyone has taken their last Work Week action, resolve the Weekend. If this is the end of the 4th week, skip the Weekend and go straight to End of the Game instead. Otherwise, after each of the first 3 weeks, in order:

1. Weekend bonus. Check your energy level (positive, neutral or negative). Your worker's final action spot is connected to 2 bonuses: take both if your energy is positive, just one (your choice) if neutral, and none if negative.
2. Update the action strips. Return all workers to their starting positions; move the week marker forward and flip the newly-active action strip to its B side; flip that week's Export Bonus tile face down; and, if you're about to begin the 4th and final week, also flip the Weekend bonus tiles to their B side.
3. Refill and balance tanks. Refill every algae tank up to its current capacity (base 4, plus 1 per removed Algae Storage tile across all Department boards in play) from the general supply. Balance the byproduct tanks: top up any completely empty tank or skim one cube off any completely full one, then, if the two tanks differ by 2 or more filled rows, shift cubes from the fuller tank to the emptier one until the gap is at most 1 row.
4. Pass the start player token to the next player clockwise, then begin a new Monday Morning phase.

End of the Game

When the 4th Work Week ends, resolve final scoring:

1. Energy bonus. Check your energy level. Your worker's final action spot connects to 2 end-of-month bonus tiles plus a VP token. There are 4 kinds of end-of-month bonus and 5 milestone colors, but you can never score the bonus for the very lightest milestone color. If your energy is positive, score both connected bonus tiles, each multiplied by how many milestones of the matching color you achieved. If neutral, choose one of the two bonus tiles and score it the same way. If negative, you score no end-of-month bonus at all.
2. Score 1 VP per removed milestone marker on your Department board.
3. Score 1 VP per tile in your largest connected group of Science tiles (including flipped Crossover tiles) on your Side board.
4. Score your Contract card's end-scoring option.
5. Score 1 VP for every 4 leftover items you're still holding, counting together: algae cubes on your Department board, bonus tokens, resource tokens, and science points.

Highest total score wins. Ties are broken in favor of whoever's milestone marker sits on the lowest row of the shared color track; if that's still tied, whoever got there first (i.e., placed a marker on that row earliest) wins.

Solo Mode

Additional setup. Take 18 export discs and 10 milestone tokens in an unused color to serve as a "conventional competitor" (cc). Use one neutral disc as the cc's VP marker. Randomly choose a capital city as the cc's starting export (no bonus token is placed there during setup, and the cc scores VP equal to that city's value — this counts as the game's first export for future transport-cost purposes). Place the remaining neutral export discs on the action track: 2 on strip B (one on each of the two middle actions), 3 on strip C (one per action), 8 on strip D (two per action), and 3 on the end strip (one per action). Finally, completely fill the byproduct storage for whichever byproduct type your department does not produce, and leave the storage for the type it does produce empty.

Additional rules.

• Monday Morning: the cc gains 1 VP per milestone it has achieved.
• Work Week: whenever your worker moves to an action spot holding one or more neutral discs, remove one of those discs from the game.
• Weekend: when updating the action strips, place every remaining disc from the strip you just flipped onto the map, following this priority: the lowest-value city adjacent to another neutral disc; if tied, the cc favors a city with a bonus token still on it; if still tied, you choose. If a bonus token was on the chosen city, remove it and award the cc 2 VP. Placing more than one disc this way is done one at a time (which can shift which city is "lowest value" partway through). Once all discs from that strip are placed, check whether the cc reached any milestones — this whole placement round counts as a single export turn for milestone purposes, awarding VP as usual. At the very end of the 4th round, the final strip is not flipped, but any neutral discs still on it are placed on the map by this same procedure anyway. At game end, the cc scores 1 VP per milestone it achieved, same as during play.