Game Preview: Laborigines

By W. Eric Martin
October 16, 2007

Publisher: Czech Board Games
Designers: Tomas & Jakub Uhlir
Players: 2-6
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 30-60 minutes
Release Date: October 2007
Downloadable rules: English

People who complain about boring themes might be looking in the wrong corners of the game world because the unusual and unexpected is out there, just waiting to be discovered. Take, for example, Laborigines, one of two new titles from Czech Board Games, the company that stormed into Spiel in 2006 with Through the Ages and Graenaland.

Laborigines puts players in the role of oddball creatures created through scientific experiments who now suffer the perils of the laboratory environment in which they were born and thrashings from a disturbing-looking brute named Moa. Your goal: Survive longer than anyone else and earn your freedom from the lab.

The game plays like an extended chase between cat and mouse—or since these are genetically mutated creatures, jabberwocks and hufflepuffs. The lab is represented by a ring of discs, which have different colors or symbols on both sides, and each laborigine (and Moa) starts on a disc. On a turn, you roll two dice, assign one die to Moa and one die to your laborigine. If you are infected—more on that later—you carry out the effect of any disease currently running through the lab.

You next carry out movement for Moa, who always moves clockwise, and your laborigine, which can move in either direction. If Moa lands on someone, that player must spend two energy tokens; lose all 20 you start with, and you’re out of the game. Only one character can be on a space, so if Moa hits someone, it moves the same distance again until it lands on an empty spot. When your laborigine moves, you can swipe two energy tokens from anyone you land on, moving again as needed to land on a free space. Whenever a diseased laborigine encounters a healthy one, the disease is transferred from one to the other, no matter which one is moving.

Once you stop moving, you turn over the disc where you land to find out what trap you’ve encountered in the laboratory: a footprint which boots you out of the current space to move again, acid which burns energy on the next turn, lightning which harms you and anyone else previously struck, radiation, explosions, and more.

Disease is another possibile trap outcome; land on a disease tile, and your laborigine gets infected and a new disease card is flipped over to see what all infected laborigines have caught. The diseases range from leprosy and hyperactivity to an inferiority complex. (Of course if you’re all infected with the latter...) The disease might also take the form of a mutation, which is possibly beneficial.

All this might sound like a horribly cruel setting for our poor little laborigines, but there are a few bright spots to keep them going. Whenever you roll a 1 on the dice, you get to claim the immunity flag, of which there is only one. As long as you hold the flag, you don’t have to spend energy when afflicted with most diseases or trod upon by someone else.

Not all the locations in the lab are harmful. You can encounter cures which boost your energy supply, an immunity flag space that lets you capture the flag, and boring spots where (phew!) nothing happens.

What’s more, whenever a laborigine is forced to spend energy, half the energy goes on the spot where it’s currently located while the other half is removed from the game. If you land on a spot loaded with a pile of energy, you acquire all of it to further fuel your activity around the lab. (Shades of Primordial Soup perhaps, with the recycling of biological waste.)

The age range is listed as 8 and up, and while there are lots of little details that could overwhelm players both young and old, you don’t have to explain what happens at every lab location before diving into the game. Instead cover them as they arise, and keep in mind that whatever image is on top of a tile before it flips over is the side that will greet you when next you land on it. Yes, Laborigines has a memory component, which might very well benefit the youngsters more than anyone else.

The game also has you mold your own laborigine before starting, so you can make your critter as freaky or as tame as you like. If you’re struck by lightning during the game, you jab a lightning marker in the laborigine and carry it around with you until you perish or escape. Disease markers and the immunity flag are treated the same way, giving the game a playful feel that belies its somewhat gruesome subject.

Laborigines is an unusual game that really needs to be played to be appreciated. If you’re headed to Spiel ‘07, be sure to stop by the Czech Board Games booth and start scultping…

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	The cover
	The prototype in action

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