Let's continue our journey, shall we?

❓ Is there a game that you can’t stop playing lately?

We have played a bunch of Darwin’s Journey and also tried the Fireland expansion (which is awesome btw), so I wanted to summarize our thoughts on the game so far. 🙂 It’s a truly amazing complex euro. The really good kind with replayability through the roof and satisfying combo-tastic gameplay. You could place down some stamps with an action activating your explorer, who then places down a tent that allows you to move your ship. How amazing is that? And that is just a short example. 😅

This of course also means that there is a lot to consider every turn, and analysis paralysis can haunt your games. 😶 Occupied worker placement locations can constrict your opportunities, as you have to pay coins to use them, but it doesn’t make the game overly restrictive like in e.g. Marco Polo, it just gives you reason to rethink your choices twice.

Tracks play a big part in the fun - like in most euros 😅. These tracks are very well camouflaged though! Actually every island and the sea are tracks that split up and meet again - so you are basically moving trackers to get stuff and unlock additional trackers on new tracks. However they really are concealed so nicely that it all just clicks thematically as you are moving around, researching unknown species.

The game is super engaging not just because of the myriad of decisions you can make, but because you have a steady supply of short term goals in addition to your long term goals. 🧐 You keep drafting objectives that you want to fulfill, because you can then unlock special abilities with them. Your crew member cards have very useful effects, but to activate them you need very specific wax seal upgrades for your workers, so you have to work a lot on that. Then there is the museum where you are shipping specimens to - you want to participate a lot in filling the rows and columns to raise your theory of evolution tracker, which brings lots of juicy points at the end.

There are many cards and tiles that can be randomized at setup. They make subsequent games feel quite different - especially the special actions tiles. So you know you are in for a fun ride every time! 😁