Can You Smell That? Aroma – a Game of Essence Q&A

One of the reasons why we love playing physical board games is because of their tactile nature. Moving pieces, rolling dice, and flipping cards is more satisfying to us than tapping an icon on a screen.

(Yes, I totally love playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild too, but that’s another matter.)

Board games give us a chance to interact face-to-face with other players and utilize more of our senses.

Yet, I can’t recall ever engaging my sense of smell as part of playing a board game. That’s why when I heard about Aroma – A Game of Essence, I was curious to learn more.

Here’s a Q&A I had with the designers about this fascinating new board game.

 

Question: One of the reasons we love board games is because of the tactile experience — playing with the physical components. But I don’t think I’ve ever played a board game that revolved around the sense of smell. Where did the idea for Aroma, a game based on smell, come from?

The idea for Aroma – A Game of Essence came from our fans and customers! 

People very clearly wanted to gamify essential oils for entertainment, but also for education.

I’m sure you can imagine that the people who use essential oils are often deeply passionate. They use them in their daily lives to do many things and often take them wherever they go. 

One specific customer sent us a hand-written letter and mentioned that he had ordered a set of essential oils from our website and had invented his own game to teach his nieces to recognize the various oil aromas. In his letter, he invoked the Kōdō (香道), or the “Way of Fragrance”, which gained popularity through 15th and 16th century Japan, where people developed an appreciation for fragrances and would play games involving incense.

That’s all we needed to hear. 

With this inspiration, we set out to make our newest creation. And with the help of an independent board game designer, we hope to revolutionize both the gaming and the essential oil worlds.

 

Question: When you set out, did you discover other board games that incorporate smell?

We weren’t very surprised to find only a handful of board games that are based on or involve scent. We tried some of them and were underwhelmed. 

Some iterations are geared toward alcohol or spices, but they’re underdeveloped or very niche, not to mention expensive. 

To our knowledge, no one has taken actual aromatic substances, specifically essential oils, and married that with board games. 

Our main mission as a company is to popularize and promote the broader and more effective use of essential oils. Involving them in a fun and educating board game could be a fantastic tool to achieve our goal — combining the best of two worlds. 

 

Question: We understand Aroma – A Game of Essence is more like 4 games in 1. Can you tell us about the 4 different ways to play the game? 

In general, every game is about smelling your way to victory. That said, quick wits, tricking your opponents, and using dexterity and smart thinking all come into play.

The four main games are: Discover, Revolve, Survive, and Collect.

 

Discover 

This one perhaps involves the most actual game strategy. 

On their turn, a player selects an oil from their oil tray, smells and identifies the aroma without revealing it. Then they select another player to challenge with the statement “This is (aroma name)” Example: “This is lavender.” (They can bluff if they want.)

The challenged player can agree or disagree. If they agree and are correct, the challenged player scores a point. If they agree and are wrong, the active player gets a point. 

If they disagree and are correct, they get a choice: They can either advance 1 space or choose to smell the oil and guess what it is. If correct, they get to move 2 spaces! 

The first player to the center wins. 

However, there’s also another possible way to win. If all five aromas in any players category are revealed before a player makes it to the center, that player is the winner. 

 

Revolve

This game involves quick wit and a dexterous nose. 

The players form a circle of shuffled oils. To begin, each player selects an oil and places it in their tray until the trays are full. 

Round 1 begins with each player selecting an oil from their tray and identifying the aroma using the aroma ID token. They then pass the oil to the player on their left and everyone gets only one sniff. They find the aroma token they think they smelled and place it face down on the board. Then players reveal their guess. If they’re correct, they get to move their aroma token one space. 

The first to the center wins.

 

Survive 

With all oils chosen randomly and placed in each player’s tray, players attempt to guess the aroma of one of the oils of their opponents. If the player does so successfully, that oil is removed from their opponent’s tray. The goal is to eliminate other players by naming all of their aromas. 

The last player standing is crowned champion.

 

Collect 

The goal of Collect is to “find” and identify all the aromas in your category and return them “home”. This game requires a strong memory. 

The game starts with each player taking turns to randomly select an oil and putting into their tray until they have a total of five. On their turn, a player chooses an opponent and selects an oil from their tray. They smell the oil, and guess what it is. 

If they’re correct and the oil belongs to their category, they “collect” it. 

If the player is correct but the oil does not belong to their category, the oil remains in play and they go again. 

If they are incorrect, their turn ends and the next player goes. 

After each turn, players can shuffle the order of their oils to confuse the other players. The player that first collects all the oils belonging to their category is the winner.

 

As you can imagine, the games aren’t “easy” because it can be hard to identify the different aromas. Even folks who are used to these aromas can easily get confused, especially under pressure. Telling the difference between pine and cypress, eucalyptus and tea tree, and even orange and lemon is much harder than you might think. 

 

Question: Who is the ideal audience for the Aroma board game?

We hope that both those who love to play games and also those that love essential oils will find this game appealing. 

By combining real game strategy, we hope to encourage gamers to try something completely different. And we wish to empower essential oil lovers to not only get more intimate and familiar with their passion, but to also have a neat way to share it in an unconventional, yet highly engaging and appealing way with their friends and family. 

We see this as a way to acquire new fans from both of these worlds. 

It’s also a way for veteran aromatherapists to excite and encourage their customers, students and patients or just a regular mom or dad to interest their family in something they’re enthusiastic about and really adore.

We also see this game as a great change of pace. We know it will be a wonderful ice breaker, perfect for a party and a fantastic way to make new friends. It will also be a great way for small groups to get some quick, light-hearted fun and an all-new experience.

 

Question: We have people in our family very sensitive to smell. Would the smells in Aroma – A Game of Essence overwhelm them? 

We don’t think so. 

While it’s true that pure essential oils are very concentrated and can be overwhelming to some people, we’ve designed the game so that’s not likely to occur. 

The game uses all-natural essential oils that are steam distilled. So, there are no solvents or chemicals in the oils. They’re 100% natural. They’re also blended into a 25% concentration with carrier oils (3 parts to 1) such as avocado and jojoba oil. This heavily dilutes the strong aroma of the essential oil, but still makes it very apparent and recognizable when smelling it. 

In addition, the game includes paper scent strips that can be used to roll the scent onto — giving players a chance to smell as little or as much of the aroma at a time as they wish. This means players control the amount of fragrance they intake — greatly reducing the chance to trigger a sensitivity. 

 

Question: We often get questions from people interested in designing board games. What was the game development process like? 

As we mentioned before, Organic Aromas has no prior experience developing board games!

The process was quite overwhelming to begin with because there are so many potential methods to involve scent in a board game. 

When we started development in 2019, we interviewed various game designers and asked for their design concepts. After aggressively searching for several months, we decided on a designer who we could physically meet and collaborate with face-to-face. This was important to us in order to strengthen the development process and speed up play testing.

Another huge bonus was that our designer works for a major board game manufacturer located nearby which allowed us to ensure high quality production standards and cutting-edge design. In fact, the game pieces were specially designed and the scent trays themselves are completely unique in the board game world.

Organic Aromas has a factory where we produce our nebulizing diffusers. Initially, we held meetings and informal play sessions after work in our conference room. Each time we would ask new colleagues to try the game. 

After we had a firm grasp on the various elements of play and determined preliminary rules sets, we created a prototype and asked our families and friends to try. Once we were convinced that we could adequately explain the game, could answer general questions, and had a sample rules sheet made, we proceeded to give the game to new players. 

Many were fascinated with the idea and gave valuable feedback about the game. This is when we felt confident to introduce it to our super fans. 

Their reaction was priceless. They were shocked and ecstatic. 

The bottom-line is that no one had ever seen anything like it. And it plays well. It’s fun and always brings the laughs.

 

Question: I see you had your game on Kickstarter to help with initial funding to publish the game. What was that experience like?

Our overall experience with Kickstarter was positive. 

Due to the long play testing and rules book development process, we were under pressure to meet our goal of releasing the game for Christmas 2020. 

Ultimately, we reached our funding goal and the game was well received. We were even lucky enough to get some veteran critics to opine that the game concept was compelling and the design aesthetic elegant and intriguing.

We learned there’s much more we can do to prepare our offering for launch. But, this pressure also forced us to motivate our resources and to perform quickly.

We’re now in the stage of educating our own Organic Aromas customer fan base about the game. 

 

Question: Since you’re not a typical board game publishing company, can you tell us a little bit about Organic Aromas? 

Organic Aromas is first and foremost an aromatherapy company selling a variety of essential oils and our market-revolutionizing Nebulizing Diffusers®. 

Not only does this proprietary technology not require water or heat/flame (which can dilute and damage the oils), but it also eliminates the need for plastic which can release toxins. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, it can emit a strong, natural aroma across a wide area in minutes. 

It employs a unique technology that uses the differential in pressure created by air pumped through specially designed glass micro-tubes to atomize/nebulize pure, natural essential oils into millions of lighter-than-air microparticles. This creates a “mist” with a very rich aroma many times stronger than that of conventional methods. The fragrance can also be measured, controlled, and delivered in a precise way.

You can learn more how it works here. 

We regularly hear from people all over the world who tell us how using our nebulizing diffusers together with specific essential oils actually changed their life by helping them treat, improve, or overcome substantial health issues.  

The idea of combining olfactory acuity with traditional board gaming is tantalizing. We can imagine a deluxe edition of this game as well as an entire new and alternate concept of game play! 

Now that we have proven we can create something fun and interesting, yet still relatively simple, we can set our sights on even larger goals like incorporating more complex game play and including literally dozens and dozens of incredible essential oils, both common and exotic, to take this game to a whole new level!

If you’d like to grab a copy of Aroma – A Game of Essence, here’s the place to grab it.