With Darwin's Journey by Skellig Games and On the Ways of Darwin by Asmodee Two games are coming onto the market this year that focus on the British naturalist and his contributions to the theory of evolution. While the latter is a family-friendly tile-laying game, Darwin's Journey takes the expert game route and comes with a worker placement mechanism. You can find out how we liked Darwin's Journey and what sets the game apart from other worker placement games in the following review.
All we see on the horizon is the line that separates the sea from the sky. But then, in the distance, there is a coast... and we tremble in anticipation of the adventure that awaits us. We live through the memories of Charles Darwin. His adventures on the Galapagos Islands, where he developed his theory of evolution... Together with our crew, we explore the islands, navigate the sea and collect specimens to advance further scientific research. These are then sent to museums to contribute to humanity's knowledge of biology.
Classic worker placement
Darwin's Journey is a classic worker placement game in which we place our 4 workers (5 after an improvement) on a placement location on the game board turn by turn and carry out the corresponding action. On the game board there are two main diaries, as well as a special and a small diary, which have 2 (small) or 6 (main & special) placement locations. Each diary is considered a continuous section. As soon as a worker is on a diary, you have to pay a placement penalty for placing another figure in the section, regardless of whether you use another action in the diary or the already placed worker is your own.
The two main diaries (pictured above) each contain two standard actions with three placement locations each. The locations only differ in the strength of the action. The left main diary has the movement actions Exploration (movement on land) and Navigation (movement on water). The main right diary contains the actions Correspondence (to secure majorities for additional effects) and Academy (improving your own workers for stronger action types).
The special diary (pictured below) has powerful actions that can only be used once per round. In order to use them, the workers must first be improved via the Academy action or a one-time joker to meet the knowledge requirements in the form of colored seals. In addition, only 2 of the 6 actions are unlocked at the beginning. In general, stronger actions, including the four standard actions, are unlocked through the small diary. If you place a worker here, you can, as long as the respective costs are paid, place a so-called lens on a stronger action space and use its action immediately. The action can then be used by all players. If an opposing player places a worker on an unlocked action, the worker must always pay one gold to the player who placed it.
Travel to the Galapagos Islands
With the help of the actions you try to collect creatures and money on the islands and the surrounding sea, as well as set up your tents in the world, send letters and complete tasks. The creatures are the most important part of the game and should not be neglected. We can donate these to the museum for research in order to obtain valuable knowledge and money. We need money for pretty much everything we want to do in the game, especially when it comes to the end of a round, all diaries have already been used and we have to pay placement fees to use actions.
Knowledge, on the other hand, is ultimately worth a large number of important victory points. At the end of the game, the collected knowledge is multiplied by the number of complete museum rows (+ 2) to determine the victory points in this area. If you have contributed a lot to the museum and, for example, collected 11 pieces of knowledge, you will receive at least 22 victory points. Each complete museum row would add 11 victory points.
Since money and knowledge are quite important to the game, we are pushed a bit to take care of the creatures, along with all the other things.
Many different goals
In addition to researching and donating creatures, we can also get a large amount of victory points by expanding our personal tableau and through so-called Beagle goals.
We get points on our personal board by equipping our workers with seals and thus improving them, setting up tents and completing smaller goals. If we complete a goal, we can place it on the upper part of the board. Depending on where we place this, we receive a permanent or one-time bonus, as well as a certain number of victory points for the end of the game.
Beagle targets provide certain collection tasks round after round, for which you get victory points. These can be creatures, seals from our workers, lenses placed, letters sent, tents placed or goals achieved on our personal board. Depending on the type of task, we receive 3 – 8 victory points per marker/thing at the end of a round. If you cleverly collect upcoming tasks, you can also generate a lot of points here.
Great solo mode
None other than the grand master of solo modes Dávid Turczi was responsible for the solo mode of Darwin's Journey and this shows through and through. With different levels of difficulty, the solo mode plays like a game against a human opponent and is from the second. Here we play against Alfred, based on Alfred Russel Wallace, who also developed ideas on the theory of evolution independently of Charles Darwin.
Basically, solo mode plays similarly to playing with two people. However, Alfred's moves always take place before our turn. Which action Alfred uses on his turn is determined by action cards that are drawn at the beginning of each turn. On his turn, Alfred mainly uses the standard actions, which are slightly adapted to him as a bot. However, just like us, he has to pay placement penalties or for unlocking stronger actions using the lenses. How much money Alfred has is recorded using a coin bar on the corresponding player board.
If Alfred cannot carry out an action on the drawn action card, he uses a so-called rest action. For this he receives 7 coins and can move forward 2 steps on the bonus track of his game board. For every coin that exceeds the end of his coin track, he also receives additional steps on the bonus track. The bonus track consists of 10 fields, whereby an action on the bonus track card is always triggered when the 5th and 10th fields are exceeded. These usually contain strong bonuses that help Alfred progress even further in the game. The player must therefore also make sure to design his moves in the game in such a way that Alfred does not advance as much on his bonus track.
With small adjustments to the respective actions, the solo mode can generally be played in the same way as the game with several people. Here, too, it is very important to research creatures and donate them to the museum, because at the end of the game Alfred is rated the same as the player himself. He researches and donates creatures just as often and can happily do so to the player if you are not careful sometimes snatch creatures from under your nose. If the end of the game has more points than Alfred at the end of the game, he has won the game.
Information about Darwin's Journey
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| Number of players: 1 – 4 Age: from 14 years Playing time: 60 - 120 minutes Difficulty: Expert game Long-term motivation: medium Classification: Worker Placement, Set Collection Author: Simone Luciani, Nestore Mangone |
Conclusion
Darwin's Journey is an atmospherically grandiose representative of the worker placement genre. We are forced to contribute at least a little to research. You have to move around the islands, research creatures and donate them to the museum, otherwise you can lag behind in terms of victory points. This can be displeasing in terms of gameplay, but in my opinion this loop of exploring and creating makes Darwin's Journey a really excellent game thematically.
Nevertheless, Darwin's Journey offers us enough opportunities to score points in other ways. Every action we take, no matter how long we have thought about our move, ends up feeling right because everything we do advances us on some path and brings us closer to our goals.
Darwin's Journey also offers a lot of room for variety. There are a total of 12 special action tiles, of which only 6 are used per game and only 2 are freely available from the start. So there is good rotation in all games. However, we also noticed that the “repeat delivery” action is sorely missed when it is not included. This campaign lets us donate creatures already in the museum to the museum again and collect the associated bonuses. If this action isn't included in a game, it sometimes feels quite unnecessary to research a creature if it has already been researched by someone else.
In general, we would like to warmly recommend Darwin's Journey. It is very playable with all player numbers and frequent players will find the game a very atmospheric worker placement game in which you can maneuver around a lot to make the best possible use of your turn.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
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Skellig Games SKE48008 - Darwin's Journey * | 75,00 EUR |
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