Play the Pipeline: The Sciencepreneur Card Game

Every product starts as a plant.

A spoonful of turmeric. A handful of rice bran. A coconut, a stalk of lemongrass. Before anything reaches a shelf, it is just something that grows.

Indonesia grows more than most. The country covers only about 1.3% of the Earth's surface, yet it is home to roughly 10% of the world's flowering plant species, 12% of its mammals and 17% of its birds, according to Indonesia's Biodiversity Clearing House.

But between a plant and a product lies a chain of choices: which ingredients to combine, how to turn them into something people want, how to protect the idea, whom to sell to, and how to earn from it again and again. Most of us never see that chain. The Sciencepreneur card game puts you inside it.

The game in three numbers

Products you can make	30
Raw materials, in 30 matched pairs	60
Real product categories	12

The whole story in eight words

That is the chain the game teaches, and you play every link of it. You are a sciencepreneur: someone who turns Indonesia's natural wealth into everyday products. You buy raw materials, manufacture products across 12 real product categories, build intellectual property (IP), trade, negotiate, manage risk and capture value through royalty. The player with the highest final score wins.

It is a business strategy game first. Biodiversity, science, innovation and commercialisation are the reason the strategy exists. According to the rulebook, every raw material in the game is genuinely used in Indonesia, and its Global Events model real economic and geopolitical forces.

In the box, and around the table

Cards, plus 30 IP tokens	226
Players	2–4
Playing time	45–60 min
Age	12+

A turn in four moves

Everyone starts with Rp50,000 and one random raw material. Then the market opens: eight raw materials, face-up, waiting.

1 · Pick from the market

Each turn you either buy one visible raw material at its printed price or draw an Action Card. The market refills only at the end of each round, so scarcity builds and choices matter.

2 · Make up to two moves

Start or collect production, sell or trade, buy from another player, play an Action Card, take a loan or exchange cash. You get two actions, so every move has an opportunity cost.

3 · Craft a product

Each product needs exactly two matching raw materials, shown on the cards. Put both in your production slot. After one full round, collect the product and claim its IP token. There is no manufacturing fee, and each product can be made only once per game.

4 · Stay within seven cards

Your hand of raw materials, action cards and cash is limited to seven at the end of your turn. Products, IP tokens and loans never count toward the limit.

Two assets, one product

This is the heart of the game. When you manufacture a product you receive two separate things: the Product itself and its IP / Royalty Token.

The Product Owner receives the sale price. The IP Owner receives the Base Royalty every time that product is sold to a player or to the bank. They can be different players. Royalty is paid only on a genuine sale: merely holding an IP token pays nothing, and IP tokens carry no automatic value at the end of the game. Their worth is the royalty they have earned and can still earn during play.

Product values follow a simple rule. Market Value is the price of its two raw materials plus Rp100,000, and Bank Value is Market Value minus Rp30,000. Four tiers result:

A quick story

Ahmad manufactures Spirulina Bioplastic Film and holds both the Product and its Frontier IP token. Budi offers Rp280,000 for the Product and Ahmad accepts, keeping the IP. Budi also pays Ahmad the Rp40,000 royalty. Later Budi sells the Product to the bank for Rp270,000, and Ahmad collects the Rp40,000 royalty again without selling a thing. Had Ahmad sold the IP token to Citra first, Citra would have collected that royalty.

Ahmad had three strategic choices: sell the product, keep the product, or monetise the IP. Good players use all three.

Twelve worlds, thirty products

The 30 products span 12 categories, from the everyday to the frontier. Every one is a pair of real Indonesian ingredients.

The two research categories are framed as ongoing scientific research. They are fictionalised educational representations for discussion, not medical advice, and no product in the game is a proven treatment or cure for any disease.

Chaos, protection and a little bit of debt

No economy runs smoothly, and neither does this one. The 40 Action Cards carry 22 different effects in six families: Attack, Protection, Business, Information, Utility and Global Event.

You can steal a raw material, audit a rival and buy their best ingredient, or confiscate a product. You can cancel an attack with a Protection card, and an IP Protection card even cancels a Regulation event. Business cards pay out trade bonuses, partnerships and research grants. Global Events reshape the whole table, and each one echoes a real force: inflation, a supply crisis, tariffs, a consumer trend, a technology breakthrough, an export boom, and new regulation that slows the next production.

The wild cards

Action cards, with 22 different effects	40
Kinds of Global Event	7
Secret missions	12

Short on cash? Take a loan of Rp100,000, Rp200,000 or Rp300,000. The catch: the debt recorded is 1.5 times what you borrowed, it is never repaid during play, and it is deducted from your final score.

And every player holds one hidden Secret Mission, worth +Rp100,000 if completed. Missions such as IP Mogul, Frontier Pioneer, Impact Entrepreneur and Royalty Builder give a trailing player a route to catch up, so nobody is ever really out of the game.

How you win

The game ends when the draw pile can no longer refill the market to eight cards. That announces the Final Round: everyone takes one last turn, and no new loans may be taken. Then the secret missions are revealed.

Your turn

The game is built for two to four players aged 12 and up, in about 45 to 60 minutes. A teacher or friend can act as an optional facilitator, keeping the bank and settling disputes, but the game is fully playable without one.

To learn more about the Sciencepreneur Indonesian Biodiversity Edition, get in touch with SciencePreneur.