Goal of the tool:
Biodeck is a free trading card game where every card is a real living species, built from real biodiversity data and pictures. The goal is to make learning taxonomy, conservation status, and species traits fun through collecting, quizzes, and light battles, trying to involve people maybe not so much into it by fun mechanism.
Niche it fills in the iNaturalist ecosystem:
It’s a playful, game-shaped front door onto biodiversity data rather than a research or identification tool. Card rarity is tied to real IUCN status and real observation frequency (via GBIF, which aggregates iNaturalist’s research-grade observations among other sources), so a genuinely rare or threatened species is rare in the game too. It doesn’t compete with identification/citizen-science tools, it’s meant to build curiosity and taxonomic literacy that can send people toward iNaturalist itself, and every card credits its photographer, license, and data source.
Is there a commercial component, or do you plan into include one in the future? Are donations requested?
No. The game is and will remain entirely free: no ads, no purchasable currency, nothing pay-to-win. There is a Patreon for people who want to help cover hosting costs, but it gives zero in-game advantage of any kind; it’s a pure, no-strings donation.
What sort of data (if any) does your app collect from its users?
An account needs an email (or Google sign-in) and password purely for login/account recovery, plus gameplay state (collection, trades, boosters opened) needed to run the game. Biodeck doesn’t connect to or read anyone’s iNaturalist account. It only uses the public, already-aggregated species data and images that GBIF exposes (which in turn draws on iNaturalist observations among other sources). No data is sold or shared with third parties.
Link to your iNaturalist profile:
Description:
Biodeck is a free, browser-based TCG (biodeck-tcg.com) covering animals, plants, and fungi. Opening a “booster” gives 5 species cards, each carrying real taxonomy (kingdom → family), IUCN status, habitat, and traits (diet, size, activity pattern, etc.), plus the source photo with full credit and license.
Card rarity scales with real-world rarity: harder-to-observe or more threatened species are rarer cards. Beyond collecting, players can battle each other in taxonomy quizzes, trade cards, bid on a player marketplace, and play several solo quiz modes (all of which quietly test and build real knowledge of classification and species traits).
It’s built on GBIF (taxonomy, observation counts, aggregated images), the IUCN Red List (conservation status), Wikidata, and the Encyclopedia of Life (trait and description data), and is currently available in French, English, and Spanish.
Discussion questions or areas seeking feedback:
- Are there specific traits or data points naturalists here would find most valuable to see on a species card that we’re not currently surfacing?
- We rely on GBIF’s aggregation of iNaturalist media rather than querying iNaturalist directly: is there real value in adding a direct iNaturalist API integration (e.g., for fresher photos or richer observation context), or does the GBIF layer already cover what matters?
- If you spot a taxonomy or photo mismatch on a card, there’s a one-click report button. Would this community find it useful to have a lower-friction way to flag issues in bulk (e.g., a shared spreadsheet or GitHub issue tracker) rather than one at a time in-app?