Season 3 of New Science, “Race to Intelligence”, closes on 20 September. It opened at the end of June, so it will have run about twelve weeks, and in that time players have pushed the game to within sight of fifty thousand cards. We expect the fifty thousandth to be found before the season ends.
When it closes, the standings freeze. That is the only thing that stops.
What you keep, which is everything
Every card you found stays in your collection. Your age stays where you got it to. Nothing is taken back, nothing is wiped, and nothing you spent the last twelve weeks doing has to be done again. The game's own words for this are that the work you put in always counts, and it is meant literally.
What resets is the race, and only the race: the leaderboard starts from zero so the next season is a fair contest rather than a coronation. If you have been playing since June you begin the next one with everything you own and a scoreboard at nought, the same as everybody else.
This is worth saying plainly because seasonal usually means the opposite. In a lot of games a season ending is a thing that happens to you. Here it is a line drawn under a race, and your shelf is untouched on the other side of it.
So there is no bad time to start
The last days before a season ends are usually the worst possible moment to pick a game up. Not here. Anything you find between now and the twentieth is yours permanently, and it is still there when the next season opens.
And the thing worth finding is still out there. Cards in New Science are not written by designers, they are invented by players: you combine two or three of them, the game works out on the spot whether they make something, and if nobody has ever made it before it is created, illustrated, and stamped with your name for good. That happens around five hundred times a day.
What comes after
A new season follows this one, and your collection walks into it with you.
Beyond that, three things are moving at once. A rebuilt version of the game has been in testing through the summer and follows the season, and it is a new interface rather than a new game: same cards, same collection, a much better place to play them. Brazilian Portuguese is now the seventh language the game speaks, and the interface and the whole card catalogue are translated. And an Android version is in testing.
The full Windows release is not until March 2027, and a free demo is on Steam now.
About New Science
New Science is a game about discovery through combination. You start with five cards, put two or three together, and the game engine works out on the spot whether they make something. If they do, and nobody has ever made it before, the card is created and illustrated there and then, and your name goes on it permanently.
Progress runs through sixteen historical ages, from the Stone Age to the Age of Intelligence. Seasons run for several weeks, and each one carries leaderboards, per-season goals, trading between players, and clans.
The demo is available and the full Windows release follows in March 2027. The game is playable in seven languages.