A board game about the digestive system

I also need some ideas about what the board spaces could possibly do, and what effects the cards can have (maybe put trivia questions in some of them?).

Hey Idun,

Cool project!
Looks like you're on a good track so far, but I can see why you're running into problems. Before any of us non-biology guys can help, we'll need the following:

1) An example of a primitive digestive system vs an advanced one.
2) An example of feedback control (I assume it's something like your bile duct injecting more fluid into the system to handle fatty foods, etc).
3) An example of "action".

A couple of thoughts come to mind:
-- If you have a board representing the digestive tract, one way to introduce evolution is to change the board, somehow. You could do something as complex as having multiple mini-boards which you assemble into a larger full board (like Robo Rally), or you could do something as simple as having multiple paths in the same board, each in its own color, representing a new step in evolution (e.g., the "red" path represents the carnivore's system, the "green" path a simple herbivore's stomach, the "blue" path a complex herbivore's stomach).

-- You might want to avoid trivia questions if you can -- they will limit your design quite a bit (i.e., you'll probably end up with "answer the question and move 3 spaces" kind of gameplay). Here's a more open-ended alternative -- make the cards contain special rules that teach digestive facts. For example, you might have an action card called "Pepsin", which can be played only on food in the stomach, and which adds 1 to your score if you play in on a food containing protein (lesson learned: pepsin, found in the stomach, initiates the breakdown of protein).

-- Rather than give each player 1 piece to move during the whole game, you might consider having players try to digest multiple foods during a session. This will allow them to move through different tracts (carnivore, simple herbivore, complex herbivore), thus learning more in the process.

I don't want to write too much more, because it's your design. Hopefully, this response won't steer you in a particular direction, but will help you avoid pitfalls whatever you decide to do.

I hope you'll post more as your design comes into focus.

-- Kreitler