Paleovet: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Dice/ Engine Building, Drafting, Set Collection
Player Age: 14+ Player Count: 1 - 4 PlayersTime to Play: 30 - 60 Minutes
Game Designer: William Thompson Publisher: Absurdist ProductionsYear Published: 2023BGG Weight: 1.8Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: William Thompson
Introduction:
Scientists have achieved the impossible and created a dinosaur park. That park inevitably fell, however the dinosaurs remain. With the amount of diseases that have progressed since the dinosaur age, these prehistoric ancients have begun to fall sick and only the paleovets can cure them. The goal of the game is to gain the most points by curing the most dinosaurs. If you fail to cure them while they are asleep, they will escape and the carnivores will take another out in the process. Dinosaurs are cured through correct dice arrangements. Players may also spend pairs and triplet dice results to gain wild tokens, new upgrades and additional dice.
Game Anatomy:
Dino Cards:
The dinosaurs come in three colours; purple, yellow and teal, while also being either carnivores (teal) or herbivores ( purple and yellow). The top bar consists of the length of time they will be asleep in your hospital and their victory point value. At the bottom of the card are the dice results needed for a cure, and its special effect.
Dice:
There are the basic dice that include one wild, two tranquilisers and one of each cure symbol. Like the unique colours of the dinosaurs, there are also matching coloured speciality dice that remove the wild and one tranquiliser to hold three results of one of the cure symbols.
Upgrades:
Upgrades come in two forms permanent upgrades and scoring opportunities. Permanent upgrades allow you to ignore alerts, modify die or extend your hospital beds.
Scoring upgrades score you additional points at the end of the game through the type of dinosaurs you have cured.
Tokens:
Gene tokens are wild and can be used throughout the game to cure dinosaurs or to gain specialty dice/unlocks. To gain a gene token you spend two of the same die faces.
Sleep tokens act as a timer until a dinosaur in your hospital wakes and escapes. Every turn during the upkeep phase, one sleep token will be removed from every dinosaur. If any dinosaurs have all their sleep tokens removed then they will flee your hospital.
Setup:
- Shuffle the dino deck then separate into five piles of ten cards. Place these in the centre of the play area.
- Shuffle the upgrades and create five stacks of four upgrades each. Under the dino cards
- Create nearby piles for the specialty die, gene tokens and sleep tokens.
- Each player gains four starting dice.
How to Play:
Each turn consists of six stages; upkeep, roll, mandatory admission, spend dice/tokens, check for waking dinosaurs, and release cured dinosaurs. When one of the five dinosaur piles runs out, players will keep having turns until it is equal amongst all players. Each player then scores their cured dinosaurs and any bonuses from upgrade cards.
Upkeep Stage:
During upkeep remove one sleep token from all dinosaurs in your hospital. If there are any upgrade piles or dinosaur piles face-down, flip the top card over. If any alert symbols are on the dinosaur abilities they will now occur immediately and affect all players.
Roll Stage:
Roll all of your dice including specialty dice. There is no re-rolling unless other cards allow it to occur.
Mandatory Admission:
If you have less than four dinosaurs in your hospital you must intake one from the centre of the table for free.
Spend Dice and gene tokens:
You can spend dice/gene tokens by curing the dinosaurs, researching new gene tokens, specialty dice, and upgrading your hospital. One tranquiliser symbol can be used to gain one dino from the field into your hospital as well creating more patients.
Check for Waking Dinos:
If a dinosaur has zero sleep tokens and has not been cured they will instead run away. These are apex predators so if this dinosaur is a carnivore it will also take one other dinosaur with them for a meal on the go.
Release Cured Dinos:
Any dinosaurs that are cured will go into your score pile. Return any gene tokens to the supply and collect your dice.
Final Thoughts:
- Back and forth on whether to heal dinosaurs or keep them around for your engine.
- Unique theme.
- Great deluxified components, mats, plastic tokens and giant first-player dino meeple.
- Needs clear denotation on the dino abilities in relation to what zone they affect. There is quite a lot of text.
Paleovet is a fun engine-building game with a unique theme. It is great for any age range and even has two other lighter game modes to ease players in. The only tricky part of the game is the vast amount of text to read. Some dinosaurs share code words to make this easier but it would be more user-friendly if there were a way that the cards denoted in which zones their ability became activated (i.e. in the field, the hospital or when being cured). With this text comes many great abilities, as there are multiple dinosaurs in the game you will bring to your hospital but you will change the urgency of their cases depending on what they can do for you. They might improve your dice rolls, protect you from punishments or make curing other dinosaurs easier. This is the part that keeps the game exciting as there are many pathways you can build your engine, through stocking up on tokens and dice, or upgrading your capabilities through cards and dinosaurs in your hospital. This is a great family-weight game that will definitely stay in my collection for many more plays.
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