In this review I’ll be looking at two Taiwan-designed board games which are both releasing at Essen. Fans of cute animals and lighter family game rejoice!

Paleolithic with Seafarers and Dawn of Humanity expansions

First of all, JUST LOOK AT IT.

Okay, so you’re immediately sold, right? Review over, go buy this game.

...why are you still here? What do you mean ‘I don’t have enough information to make a reasonable purchasing decision? YOU CAN HAVE A MAMMOTH MEEPLE.

Paleolithic is a game of resource gathering and set collection in pre-historic Taiwan. You play a tribe of humans (and animal companion of your choice) trying to collect resources, though whether you’ll spread out for variety or cluster for focus is up to you. Collected resources can be used to improve your presence on the island, or craft point-scoring artifacts, sets of which can net massive bonuses depending on your tribe.

And that’s pretty much the game! The two expansions (which were very kindly sent to me as well by publisher Shepherd Kit) add a small layer of complexity but a heavyweight game this is not. I’m leaning hard on the images in this review because that (along with the PHENOMENAL component quality and toy factor) is the huge appeal of the game - it’s adorable, bright, colorful and plays like Catan 1.5 without the trading - in other words, it’s the perfect family game.

Paleolithic is great for playing with small children who just want to move their animals around, collect cubes, and throw dice. For older gamers, you can add in one or both expansions, which add unique animal powers for each tribe and another resource track to manage.

Even though it’s the lightest game I’ve probably ever reviewed, Paleolithic is just so adorable I want to keep it forever, even just as a kid-friendly way to introduce people to gaming. (most of my shelf is… not PG.) It’s also so cool to have games set in places OTHER than Europe.

So long as you’re aware of the low weight (and some rulebook translation issues) you’d do well to pick up this game. ALSO MAMMOTH.

Adventurer’s Kit: Expedition

Travel the world and perform Archaeology™ in AK:E, a card game of collecting artifacts from across the globe.

Gather a team of Shiba Inu drivers, camera-wielding cats, and intrepid explorers and send them off on an expedition to grab artifacts, as helpfully illustrated in the image below.

The idea is to try and do a chain combo - forming an adventure team that can dig as deep as you can into the card columns in order to increase efficiency. There’s a real sense of push your luck as you try to go just a little further only to hit a bad draw and stumble back three paces, letting your opponent grab a ton of points instead.

Deciding which continent to send a team to requires analyzing the scoring goals revealed during the game and which digs your opponents are likely to go for; you also have to balance digs against achieving the bonus Toolkits that can sub in as a specialist of any type.

The game is adorable, with a cool spatial element (with this team I can dig 5 deep in Europe, but three of those are rocks, and Asia is worth bonus points this game…) but this lightness is at odds with the idea of leading expeditions to hunt for treasure, presumably to put into a museum. I have a deep love of museums and anthropological history, but treasure hunting and shipping artifacts off to west-hemisphere museums has a long and troubled history, and I worry that games like AK:E are reinforcing the idea that such things are lighthearted

Perhaps the adventurers in this game could have been going on a sightseeing tour of the world’s great heritage sights instead - that would give us the same globe-trekking gameplay but without the whole ‘take people’s cultural artifacts’ thing.

Nevertheless, I like AK:E - it’s a fun familyweight card game with a unique mechanical conceit and some real decisions in between the colorful animals. I don’t like it as much as Paleolithic (just because there are no mammoth meeples) but it is much more easily transported and feels like a great kid’s card game.

Double Adventure Review: Paleolithic & Expansions; Adventurer's Kit: Expedition

Calvin Wong

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