OUR REVIEW

Adventures in SOuth east Asia

Lost Temple

CHOICE OF CHARACTERS IN THE JUNGLE

Now and again mechanisms appear that are quickly picked up for the Oeuvre of all game designers. Worker placement for one; this is the activation of different actions by placing a pawn. Caylus by William Attia was by no means the first game of this kind, but it made the basically simple mechanism available for a bigger market and for imitation. Or a more recent example: Deck building in 2008. Inseparably connected to Donald X. Vaccarino and Dominion, it did not take long until other designers and publishers picked up the idea. Maybe one of the reasons for this is that both mechanisms leave lots of leeway for the final realization; neither the shuffling of cards nor the placement of a pawn is a mechanism in the true sense of the word, but rather a necessary evil when playing. But both have been upgraded to a game-defining element by artifice. And what do those musings have to do with Lost Temple? In Bruno Faiduttis game we find a mechanism that should be applied much more often; it is exceedingly flexible, highly interactive and goes well with topics. And it was not created by Bruno Faidutti. But let’s start at the beginning.

In Lost Temple players embody adventurers who in 1927 are on their way to a legendary temple in the jungles of South East Asia. The cover really screams Indiana Jones and the contents of the box – a board, some cards (one set of cards in each of the featured languages!), card board chips, plastic diamonds and pawns – are in harmony with the topic. The illustrations by Pierô are – as usual – very well-done and create an adventurous, exotic flair with the necessary amount of winks. Basically, Lost Temple is a very simple movement game. We move our adventurers step by step toward the main temple that provided the name of the game. Sometimes we end up on event squares with face-down tiles, which we may turn up. The effects of those tiles are mainly positive, but to provide some salt for the soup there are also negative events.

Those tiles provide either emeralds or movement points or the starting player marker or machetes which we need in due course to pass jungle areas. Negative events can be the loss of painstakingly achieved emeralds or machetes. Sometimes we encounter temple or village spots on the board, whose function does not come into play immediately or always. So far so unspectacular! Lost Temple gets its real allure from the mechanism of character choice. This mechanism is known mainly from Ohne Furcht und Adel / Citadels, a game also created by Faidutti. But, as the rules of the card game that was published in 2000 by Hans im Glück tell us, the mechanism was created by Marcel-André Casasola Merkle. Two years before Citadels the cute choice of characters was used first in Verräter from Adlung Spiele. Faidutti has fine-tuned Casasola Merkles basic idea for Citadels especially as to the interaction of the characters and has taken it up again for Lost Temple nearly unchanged.

At the start of each round the nine character cards are shuffled. In relation to the number of the players a given amount of cards is set aside face-up and face-down. In case of five players, for instance, two cards are placed open-faced and one card face-down. Then the starting-player is handed the remaining cards and secretly chooses one of them which he keeps and sets down face-down. The remaining cards are handed on in clock-wise direction; each player chooses one and sets it down. The last player has only two cards to choose from. The last card is set down face-down, too, and here we already have an interesting situation: The starting player knows which cards are in play but not which card is left-over at the end of the round. The admittedly rather big advantage for the starting player is a bit mitigated by this, especially as each other player has at least an inkling of what his predecessor could have chosen and what is left for the next player.

The reason for it being important to know who did choose which character lies in the interwoven functions of the characters. When all players have chosen a card the characters – not the players! – are called in a pre-defined sequence. First the Shaman, who must name another character – not player! – with whom he wants to change places when this character is called. And here the dilemma becomes obvious: The Shaman is exceedingly powerful, as he can topple the current positions on the board. But only if he chooses a character that, first, is in play and, second, belongs to a player that is ahead of the Shaman. In the worst case a bad choice can catapult the player of the Shaman into last position, gleeful laughter of the others included.

The case of the Thief is similar, who can steal all emeralds from a character – exactly, not from a player! – but, again, only if he chooses a character that is in play and whose “owner” has emeralds in his possession. These plastic gems are the currency of the game, which some characters must use in order to be able to move. The priest, for instance, can discard two emeralds in order to move to the next temple spot. The Elder works basically the same way, only that he moves to the next village. The Scout, on the other hand, can exchange his emeralds 1:1 for movement points. The Canoe (correctly, the card should be named Canute) changes emeralds into double the amount of movement points, up to a maximum of 20 points. If you hoard emeralds in order to use the Scout or the Canoe soon you are course a preferred target for the Thief. The Seer enables a player to take a look at the event tiles on the board and to switch them. As each turn only provides one emerald for supplies it can sometimes be necessary to place a tile providing several emeralds in front one oneself, as the Seer can take one or two steps after looking at tiles. The Craftsman receives a machete and can take up to two steps. And, finally, the Child, that moves forward to the next pawn in front.

Faidutti here has fallen back deliberately not only on a proven mechanism but on a proven dynamic, too. Following the motto of „I think that you think, because you plan to do this and that … and so I hope that” jolly guessing and speculating develops on who might have chosen which character in relation to the current situation. A remaining rest of uncertainty provides the necessary levity. So we do not have silent musings at the table but a lively interaction to and fro, pro and con. It is just fun to get away unscathed with the chosen character or to “catch” the intended character. In this aspect, all the same, Lost Temple comes over a bit tamer than Citadels. It is not that nasty and destructive and thus clearly more suitable for families. Where you could get caught and sometimes hat do get caught in an exchange of tit-for-tat you need to keep an eye on speed in Lost Temple. There are few sources for income, but many many possibilities to change emeralds into movement. The thereby evolving focus on the plastic gems concentrates the attention of all players on one element and thus provides potential for conflicts. And again, due to the lack of buildings, which in Citadels have additional functions of their own and in combination with the characters, Lost Temple is the more approachable game. The path to the finish is clearly staked, but stays interesting throughout. There might be games where nothing goes right but thanks to a relatively short time for playing a game you can live with this. Nobody gets really massively left behind – a cleverly used Shaman can turn events – but such a masterly move needs to work before you can cheer. These situations and considerations define Lost Temple. When you have mastered the mechanism, two to eight players can immerse themselves in a lovely family game. In case of two and three players, each player chooses two characters, which works well, too, and makes the game a bit more tactical, but real fun emerges when four and more play. In general you can say, as in many of those games, the more the merrier and the more chaotic!

As regards to the question at the start, why Casasola Merkles idea is not used more often? At first glance the mechanisms looks substantially more concrete in its structure as the sequence in which characters are chosen, is clearly preset. To pick up such a pre-defined structure might be a big hurdle for many designers, even if that what you do with the characters chosen is as up to their fancy as is worker placement. And therefore it would be nice if the felicitous Lost Temple did not remain the last of its kind.

Klemens Franz

Players: 2-8

Age: 10+

Time: 40+

Designer: Bruno Faidutti

Artist: Pierô

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: White Goblin Games 2011

Web: www.whitegoblingames.nl

Genre: movement game with choice of characters

Users: For families

Users: With friends

Version: multi

Rules: en, fr, nl, de

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Basically a simple movement game

Well-known mechanism of character choice

Compares to:

Ohne Furcht und Adel, Verräter, Tal der Abentuer

Other editions:

Arclight, Japan; Stronghold, USA; Lifestyle Ltd., Russia

My rating: 6

Klemens Franz:

Lost temple is proof that the well-tested mechanism of character choice works in a move & roll game, too. Not so “nasty” as its predecessors!

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 0

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 0

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0