Game Review: Caveman

By Torsten Meckel
December 18, 2007

Publisher: Make a Game (MAG) Ltd.
Designer: Simon Hall, Matthew Hall, Magdalene Vrijland & Terry Shaw
Players: 2-6
Ages: 10+
Rules Language: English/German

This game was completely under my radar, but after being talked into playing by the designer at Spiel ‘07, what looked like a children’s game at first glance developed into a very interesting game. (Having the opportunity to play a game under the eyes of the designer is a first for me and highly recommended if you can manage it.)

1. Box and contents
The front of the box displays a T-Rex hunting humans, so at first it was a little off-putting. Still, it is a game and not a simulation of human evolution, so one can forgive that. Asked about this, the designer explained that they had tried to use more realistic beasts, such as a saber-toothed tiger, but it just wasn’t as much fun as with a T-Rex. Fine by me.

The cardboard of the box is, in my opinion, a bit thin but sufficient. (Being used to boxes from Eurogame companies, I may be a bit spoiled.) Inside the box, you find a sturdy gameboard, which displays a volcanic island in the middle and six beaches surrounding it where the different human tribes can land.

The humans are made of sturdy cardboard, although for those who play their games very hard, plastic ones can be bought. (I skipped that.) Each of the six players have pieces that depict eight adults (4 cavemen, 4 cavewomen), four children, and five developments. The game also includes 60 square playing cards (of normal quality and quite usable), a rulebook in English and German, four player aids (2 English, 2 German, and brilliantly designed as they contain most of the information needed to play the game), special dice, and finally several painted plastic dinosaurs with which to harass your opponents.

2. Goal of the game
There are three ways to win the basic game:

• Be the first to get all five development tiles (Spear, Fur, Wheel, Fire and Camp),
• Place all eight of your adults on the board, or
• Have the most adults and developments when the card stack runs out.

3. Rules and general description
Resources are the heart of the game. They are distributed randomly on marked spots on the map. To use them, one of your men or women have to stand on them at the end of your turn. If it is the right combination, you get the corresponding development tile, e.g. flint + wood = fire.

As you can imagine, fights will erupt for the different resources.

All of the developments grant you special abilities, such as battling better against competing cavepeople or increasing the survivability of your cavekids. That’s right, I said cavekids. If one of your men and women are on the same spot at the end of your turn—and another tribe member gathers food for them (women gather berries and men hunt meat by standing on the corresponding resource)—the couple produces a cavekid. Reproduction is essential to the future of your tribe as you can bring only four cavepeople onto the island to start; everyone else must appear through breeding.

In the following round you can roll the survival die to see whether the kid grows up—or perishes. Having fur and fire increase the survivability of your offspring, but even under optimal circumstances, there’s a 33% of the kid dying. Life isn’t easy in the Stone Age…

Finally, you can do battle, either caveman on caveman by ending your movement in the same space as someone else or by siccing a dinosaur on another player. Roll as many combat dice as you have pieces, with spears providing better odds of a hit, and the loser loses the difference of hits in men.

4. Flow of the game
Each turn you first draw a card to determine the total movement points for your tribe, as well as whether you’re moving a dinosaur or drawing an event card. After movement, you have combat between tribes or species. If you have two people standing on the appropriate set of resources, you then claim a development tile; you can claim each tile only once and need all five to win. Finally, you give birth to children or see whether the child you already have grows up.

5. Conclusion and opinion
Caveman really surprised me. At first the game looked very simple, but it got quite interesting as to the choices that have to be made. Do I attack green to get a second wood and invent the wheel, or should I instead reproduce, or…

Another intriguing aspect is that there is no real runaway leader. You can always block a resource, set a dinosaur on a player’s heels, or something else. In the final turn of our first game, every player (except me) had the opportunity to win. Had green killed a yellow piece—and vice-versa—that player would have won; if red had succeeded in reaching the wood piece, she would have won for having all development tiles.

So all in all, it’s two thumbs up from me—highly recommended!

[Editor’s note: This review initially appeared on the BoardGameGeek Caveman page and has been revised and reprinted with the author’s approval.]

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Seems like it could be more fun than David Brin’s Tribes.  (Though I’m a fan of Brin.) Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Dec 18, 2007 at 09:37 PM | #

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