Paleo

Paleo is a co-operative game where 2-4 players work together as a stone age tribe. (It’s also got a solo mode.) Your aim in Paleo is to complete adventures, and survive long enough to finish a cave painting. You want to leave some kind of legacy behind for future generations, right?

Problem is, life in the stone age was hard. Life was unfair; life was a lottery. You never knew what was around each corner. (And we’re not talking metaphors… we mean that in the literal sense!) The same rings true in Paleo, but in the fun form of flipping over cards.

Each player gets their shuffled share from a large deck. Everyone places their top three cards, face-down. You’ll pick one of these locations to ‘explore’ (flipping it over and dealing with the consequences). You get to judge what might lie in wait at the locations by the artwork on the cardbacks. Three, two, one: you all flip over your own chosen card. Then you discuss about how to best deal with the cards.

Some demand payments to overcome the scenario. It could be taking on a dangerous animal, or trading with another tribe, for example. Will you sacrifice completing your own location to help your pal that’s about to suffer a nasty snake bite?

These are minor hurdles to overcome, though. You’ll work through your deck and at the end of the ‘day’, you’ll have to feed your tribe. You can craft objects and work towards that all-important wooly mammoth painting. If failure strikes, you have so many skulls you can earn before your tribe goes the way of the dinosaurs…

Paleo has a fun blend of deck-building and simultaneous action selection, alongside memory skills. You reshuffle the deck for the next ‘day’ and re-deal out cards again. Will you be in a better place to tackle ‘tomorrow’s’ adventures, now you’ve got better tools? Or will you once again feel the urge to poke the snake that bit you yesterday…?

Paleo includes multiple modules, offering a pleasant range of variety. Paleo won the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2021, which is a big deal. It’s a much sought-after award within the board game industry. As a result, Peter Rustemeyer’s Paleo joins a terrific board game ‘Hall of Fame’.

Player Count: 1-4 Players
Time: 45-60 minutes
Age: 10+