It’s time to travel back to the prehistoric era! Expand your tribe by bringing the coveted fire to different regions, but be careful not to get burned! There are also plenty of resources to collect, like fish and mushrooms, to make life easier, and plenty of cave-friends to recruit to grow your tribe bigger and better! Let’s get started.

What Is It?

A tile laying game with 3 ways to play! We’ll talk about Discovery Mode first, Each round players will draft a tile and place it into their 5×5 grid adjacent to a matching terrain tile, or their “wild” center tile. If a player place a volcano, they also get to place a fire token on their board, which will help improve their score in the terrain it is in at the end of the game. Once players have worked through all the tiles in the game, they score each region accordingly – Number of connected squares of that terrain X number of fire symbols in the terrain. Highest score wins!

Who Is It For?

  • Ages 8+
  • 2 – 4 Players
  • Fans of Kingdomino who want a little more / options for gameplay
  • Fans of family weight games (small ruleset, short turns)

Variants

Totem Mode – Adds in resources to collect worth points on their own, and bonus points for having the majority of any. I felt that this added a small layer into the game to change things up, with new ways to get points. It also adds some room for more strategy (i.e. go for all the majorities, vs staying more focused on your terrain sizes). A small step up, but great addition one players are familiar with the Discovery Mode

Tribe Mode – This allows you to use resources to recruit various cave-people to your tribe, who will score based on different elements such as resources surrounding them on the grid. This adds yet another layer onto the resource collection, and strategy of when to spend them, or if you should focus on collecting them in order to get certain cave-people. Again, it just gives players more room for points, and adds more variety to the game so that it doesn’t get stale.

PROS

  • Replay Value – 3 ways to play
  • Rules – Small, well-written rule set. Basic game is very similar to Kingdomino, so there is also a small learning curve if you’re familiar with that game
  • Components – Overall nice quality all around, I love the the cute little cave-person meeples
  • Aesthetics – Great look to everything + clear iconography
  • Smooth gameplay / turn flow
  • Good at any player count & fun for a wide range of gamers

CONS

  • Theme – Didn’t really feel like it went with the Kingdomino name, like the others in the series
  • Insert – The tiles are very tight in the insert, making them hard to take in and out
  • The 2 player game forces the 7×7 grid on the game (in the original, it was a play option) which is probably necessary because of the fire mechanism, not a big deal, but I always liked the 5×5, so it is just something to take note of

Final Thoughts

As a big fan of Kingdomino, I honestly wasn’t expecting much, but I was not disappointed by this one bit! I absolutely appreciate how light / streamlined the original game is, and I like the Discovery Mode of this game, because it’s very similar in play style and weight, but the volcano/fire aspect elevates it just enough to keep things fresh. Being able to add to the multiplier in a section of your board is such a small tweak, but can really open up the strategy of the game. I think that alone sets it apart from the original, and makes me want to play this more than the original most of the time. If you think Kingdomino is just a little too light, you might feel the same way. Plus, this has 2 more ways to play, which don’t increase the difficulty by very much, but do provide more ways to score, more strategy, and more replay value, all of which is awesome. Overall, a very solid re-implementation!

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 8/10
Designer – Bruno Cathala
Artist – Cyril Bouquet
Publisher – Blue Orange Games
MSRP – $24.99
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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