Take a garden trowel, grow pea plants and become a master geneticist!

Gregor Mendel was a 19th-century Augustinian who is called the father of modern genetics. In Genotype you are one of his assistants and you battle to collect experimental data on pea plants.

You do this by determining how the plants inherit their most important characteristics: seed shape, color of the flowers, color of the stem and height of the plant. The observable properties of a pea plant (the phenotype) are determined by its genetic composition (the genotype).

The relationship between genotype and phenotype and the nature of genetic inheritance are at the heart of Genotype: A Game of Mendelian Genetics. During the game you are given pea plant cards showing a series of phenotype traits that you try to produce and collect (such as pink flowers and a tall plant) to score points.

Each round the dice are rolled to determine which plants are grown. This can create the properties you are looking for. Then each player takes turns choosing a number of dice to complete their pea plant cards or further their research. The traits produced during dice rolling are essentially based on Punnet squares, with the parent plants passing on one gene at a time.

By changing the genes of these parent plants, players can increase the chance of rolling the desired traits. Rolling dice to complete pea plant cards is the main way to score points in this game.

The difference between the standard version of Genotype and this deluxe version is the material. The deluxe version includes wooden game materials, metal coins and glass markers.