Zoïko: When a Card Game Makes You Love Biodiversity

A rejected application, two creators who refused to give up, and the urge to make people fall in love with nature: that’s how Zoïko came to be — a card game that puts French biodiversity — forest, river, mountain and sea — right into your hands. The story of a self-publishing adventure made of one challenge after another, from that first rejection to an Ulule campaign funded at over 250 %.

Quentin Pillot & Aliénor Simon-Guschemann — the creators of Zoïko (Les Ingérables studio).

The Seed — A Rejection, a Spark

I’m Quentin Pillot and, together with my colleague Aliénor Simon-Guschemann, we created Zoïko: a fast card game for ages 8 and up, playable head-to-head, brilliantly illustrated by Solveig Colomb.

In September 2024, a call for applications from Calanques National Park landed at just the right moment: we love animals, we love games, we love passing knowledge on. And that happens to be our job — at our company, Les Ingérables, we build playful learning tools for museums and research centres, helping them share their work with the general public. A friend then introduced us to Altered, and the idea struck: what if we made a collectible card game about animals? We knew Bioviva was already exploring nature through games… but with all the enthusiasm of the early days, we told ourselves: “we’ll do better!”

With a solid proposal in hand, we applied. The answer: NO — we were a company, not a non-profit.

“So why not keep going anyway?”

Despite the rejection, the idea felt far too good to drop. We decided to go for it — but to widen the scope to the whole of French biodiversity. One thing still bothered us, though: a collectible card game isn’t exactly kind to the planet. So we made a bold call: turn our backs on the “collectible” model and design a complete, self-contained game — one box, and everything’s in it. At its heart, an original mechanic true to our values: one that lets players tell resilient species apart from the rest.

♻️ Resilience is a species’ ability to return to its territory after a disturbance.

That’s where the game’s very first name came from: Résilience. We’ll come back to that.

Germination — Playtests and an Audience

We ran a lot of tests before landing on a mechanic we were happy with. From there, we built a first prototype using royalty-free images found online, and started having people around us play it. That feedback helped us refine the mechanic, tweak some card powers and rebalance the scoring.

Proud enough, at any rate, to show it to a wider audience: we took it to conventions, mostly across the south of France. The first real reactions — at the Cannes Games Festival 2025 in particular — were unambiguous: some people loved the game… and others didn’t. That taught us something essential: you can’t please everyone. So we owned it and picked our audience — biodiversity enthusiasts, families, teachers — even if that meant not aiming at hardcore gamers.

That feedback also showed us our handling of ecosystems was a little too tame, even dull. So we reworked the mechanic so that each ecosystem has its own strategy and its own effects: the game gained depth without losing any of its simplicity.

Which brings us back to the name. Résilience was spot-on in substance… but not exactly catchy, and it didn’t speak to players. We needed something more playful, easy to remember. We eventually found it: Zoïko.

Four Ecosystems — At the Heart of the Game

In practice, Zoïko is played with cards split across four ecosystems: forest, river, mountain and sea — each with its own strategy. Every card is either an animal or a plant: you lay your cards down, build your territories, and slip in a few sly moves against your opponent thanks to the powers — swapping a territory, transforming one of their cards, or forcing them to shuffle their hand and draw again. Easy to pick up, clever, and never mean.

But Zoïko’s real signature is its humour: every species gets its own little line, as accurate as it is cheeky.

Blooming — True-to-Life Species, Artwork That Pops

All that was left was finding THE person who would bring it all to life. We put out a call expecting very few replies… and received around fifty! We pored over portfolios, thought long and hard, contacted a few artists… before unearthing the rare gem, the one who had understood us: Solveig Colomb.

Then we had to pin down WHAT to illustrate. We had a rough idea of the animals and plants we wanted, but no definitive list. For the plants, a researcher friend, Mary Robles, wrapped up the selection in no time — a two-hour job. For the animals, it was trickier: nobody around us could help… until the Frames festival in Avignon, where we met Céline Bouquet, a wildlife photographer. She agreed to come along for the ride: her photographs became our reference material.

We handed all of it over to Solveig. A thousand details had to be settled to show the species at their best — card colours, square or rounded corners, titles, icons, points…

Two months later, the game’s 64 illustrations were ready.

Harvest — The Big Leap: Ulule and Production

The prototype was finally holding up, so we approached publishers. Few replies, and when one came, it wasn’t the right fit. So we decided, very quickly, to go for self-publishing — without the faintest idea of all the steps (and costs) that would follow: doing everything from A to Z, from design to printing and distribution.

We launched the Ulule campaign in September 2025, on a French, secure platform. And then came the euphoria: in just 2 days we were already at 80 % of our target! We figured it was in the bag, that we’d hit 100 % the next day…

…except the curve suddenly flattened. The days went by, we kept refreshing the page, doubt crept in: it would take another 17 days — 19 in total — to cross the 100 % line. A genuine emotional rollercoaster. But once past that milestone, the momentum came roaring back: by the end of the 30 days, Zoïko was funded at over 250 %, carried by players, by our friends and family, and by our work on social media.

The game could finally see the light of day!

After all that, we launched production of 2,000 boxes. And once again, when the pallet turned up with every single copy on it… wow. There’s real pride in having seen this project through. We keep bringing it to conventions — Nuit des Étoiles, the Marseille Fair, the Cannes Games Festival, the Istres game festival, Marti’games… — and most players buy it after a single game: it’s been rather well received.

We also had to find a distributor. And there: very, very complicated. Plenty of rejections — we’re “nobody”, we have no name, no first game behind us, and distributors tend to be wary. We lined up meeting after meeting, took a fair few “no”s… then, somewhere along the way, we found one. But that part was really hard.

The Ecosystem — Zoïko, What’s Next?

In the end, the game came out fairly fast — 1 year from project to release — and we managed to reach our audience. We kept our motivation all the way through, and today it’s still a joy to introduce people to Zoïko and watch players light up. Looking ahead, we’re picturing several instalments, playable on their own or alongside the base game, each devoted to a different French national park — starting with the Calanques.

Looking back, this adventure has been one long series of challenges: a rejection to kick things off, lukewarm feedback, publishers who wouldn’t follow, a distributor nowhere to be found, a thousand details to settle… Each time, we had to take the hit, adapt, and set off again.

♻️ Rejections, doubts, unexpected detours… but we always came back. Rather like the species in our game.

“My partner hates board games… and he absolutely loved yours!”

We’ve heard that sort of thing more than once. And it’s probably the finest reward there is.

And so the circle closes: it all began with a call from Calanques National Park, about the wildlife and flora of that very territory… and that is precisely where the adventure carries on, with Zoïko Calanques, the first instalment devoted to the Calanques.