PALEO

When the dodo was still alive ...

… and the mammoth could still be hunted, in those good old times, we roam through forest and on mountain, hunt in rivers, build shelters, develop advanced ideas and, of course, we dream, too. A fridge for storing perishable haul would be cool, medication against heart trouble and a chain saw would be wonderful. But - if wishes were horses then transport we’d have? Wheels?

To begin: A passage in the rules tells us „Do not look at the front of the cards when setting up the game!“ The game is meant to be experienced cooperatively in adventure mode, failure in the first few games is normal, knowledge and information acquisition is necessare. I will take the above-mentioned hint seriously and not let anything slip.

Each player roams the so far unknown world with his group of two people. Before each step - a small step for me, bla bla ...  each player takes one of the three top cards of his personal stack and checks them. As the backsides of the cards provide vague clues to the front side, the cooperative actions are plannable, within limitations.

Hidden Stone Age surprises

The revealed cards can be resolved, most negative ones must be resolved, unfortunately. Nearly always you can select from several option, many of them are only resolvable with the support of other players’ groups. Helpfulness is a main feature and each turn must be considered by all together. As is often the case, the use of many resources provides big hauls. Resources are mainly abilities of people and items like torches, stone wedge, spear or fur, and, very important, cards - always the top ones from the personal stacks. All property is group-related, only food, wood and stone are available to all in the communal cave.

As the red card backs also indicate that a probably negative event is in the offing, you must consider carefully whether to select an action during which cards must discarded. Red discarded cards yield a skull; five skulls end all paleontological actions. A skull must also be suffered if a person takes more damage than it can sustain and dies from multiple heart failure.

Night falls

When the card stacks of all players have been used, the survivers must be fed and mission tasks must be completed. This depletes the food stock and additional commodities must be discarded, or else: skull! But we are still alive and maybe we have already scratched one part of the five-part cave painting into the rock. Apropos scratched: We are not done yet. The next day gives each player a new stack with all challenges and pitfalls. And only the completed mammoth on the cave walls allows us to sink victoriously into the not yet invented pillow and draw a relieved breath.

Fazit:

PALEO is a brilliant cooperative feat! Mechanisms are basically simple; the complexity comes from the manifold card combinations and options. As each level combines three out of ten pre-defined modules, the card decks are different and games or offered sorted by level of difficulty in the rules.  Variety for frequent players is guaranteed.

Jörg Domberger

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 45-60

Designer: Peter Rustemeyer

Artist: Dominik Mayer, Ingram Schell, Franz-Georg Stämmele

Publisher: Hans im Glück 2020

Web: www.hans-im-glueck.de

Genre: Cooperative, development

Users: For experts

Version: de

Rules: cn de en fr it jp nl ru

In-game text: no

My rating: 7

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 1

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 3

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0