Darwin's Journey

with all mini expansions, metal coins, wooden lenses, plastic wax seals. ordered from the publisher's site. when this was on KS(Jan 2021) i wasn't even remotely aware of the existence of modern board games.

Way too many parts, requirements, and mechanics; yet it's so easy to prevent yourself from progressing toward a satisfying conclusion.

Making 1-Star review because I'm at my wits end trying to get a reply from the developer or the publisher after my copy was stolen in delivery. I would really like to still get a copy of the KS Deluxe Edition I ordered, but all I'm getting is radio silence.

PLEASE CONTACT ME BACK!

First play impressions. Probably 8+ if you don't care about streamlining or theme. Mixed feelings. On one hand, a very smart game with well-designed mechanisms and a lot of variability. An ambitious design, very much in the trend of the complex, heavy euro with different ways to get points. There's good depth to explore here and interaction is significant. On the other hand, the board is overwhelming and even for a worker placement, this is a very challenging game to get a handle on. While I was able to learn the mechanics of play, the strategy of the game was rather lost on me for most of my first play, making for a pretty bad first play experience. Once I was able to understand the strategy, I'd already lost the game... but then had to wait another two hours to officially lose it. I think I'll enjoy it more on replays, as I won't fall into traps so easily and might figure out ways to come back after falling behind, but it probably won't make it into my collection for a few reasons: (1) too dry thematically (2) the map is hard to read, causing confusion about where you can go (3) the overwhelming presentation and overall 'fiddlyness' would greatly limit the group of people who would play this game with me. I wouldn't be surprised to hear it's someone's favorite game, but while I'm happy to play it again at some point, I doubt I'll ever feel that strongly about it.