Prehistories

Game overview

Alexandre Emerit, Benoit Turpin

Camille Chaussy

The Flying Games

≃ $ 26

30 min

2 - 5 players - 8+

Download the rules

The game in video

Prehistories is a competitive game for 2 to 5 players lasting about 30 minutes.

The game takes place in prehistoric times. You are at the head of a tribe, and you will send your hunters after different types of animals. On their return, you will be able to illustrate their victories by painting murals in your cave while respecting the instructions given by the elders.

The first to fulfill the wishes of the elders wins the game!

What's in the box ?

Sets of 12 Hunter cards

Player aid cards

Animal tiles to place on your 3D board

Legendary Animal tiles

3D boards representing your cave

Totem tokens (8 per player).

Double-sided Objective cards (Sun/Moon)

Sticker sheet that will allow you to stick 3 tile stickers of your own color on your 3D board before your first game.

Double-sided board (2-3 players / 4-5 players)

And what about the rules?

What I found helpful is that the languages have been separated in different booklets.

There is nothing more annoying than having to leaf through a big 30-page rulebook containing 4-5 different languages.

As for Prehistories, the game comes with 2 rulebooks, one in French, the other in English.

The rules of the game fit in only 8 pages! If we ignore the description of the objective cards and the setting up, we can even say that the explanation of the game fits in 4 pages.

The whole set of explanations is well organized, the examples are very clear. At a glance, we understand how the actions available to us actually work.

Many notes in yellow boxes provide a little more clarity, and a better understanding of the examples.

In addition, we have 2 pages of explanations about the objective maps. We can see that the editor has tried to add as many examples as possible to improve the comprehension of some of the cards.

All right, and how does it play?

: Set up for 2 players

: Your cave at the beginning of the game

: Your starting hand consisting of 3 hunter cards

: In this case, I win the tile without hurting myself.

: It is required to send hunters for a total value of 13 in order to recover a Legendary animal tile.

: I can take the tile but I will get an injury

: Your cave at the end of a game

What is the purpose of the game?

The end of the game comes as soon as a player has spent his 8th and last totem token, by placing it on the Objective cards or on the board.

The setting up

Each available space on the board is covered with the corresponding tile. Finally, we draw 3 cards from our deck. And we’re ready to play!

Playing the game

The game will be played in 3 phases:

The first phase is played simultaneously.
Each player reveals and adds up all their cards and the person with the highest score starts first.
You will be able to assign your hunters to the different hunting locations available on the board. As long as their combined value reaches at least the hunting value with a wound (broken red arrow), you get the tile back. You can also choose not to assign any hunters. In this case, they will return to your hand, while the hunters who have hunted will go into the discard pile.
Then you will draw a certain number of cards from your hunter’s set depending on he number of wounds and of tiles collected.
You will place the tiles earned during your turn in your cave following these instructions:
the animals’ legs must point downwards.
the first tile must be placed on the first left column
the tiles you won must be adjacent to the tiles previously laid.
When your turn is over, we move on to the next player with the highest score.

Once everyone has played, we start again from step 1. This continues until one player manages to discard his 8 totem tokens.

It’s all well and good, but what do I do with these totem tokens?

As soon as you have fulfilled the request of the Elders on an objective, you can place the number of totem tokens indicated on the objective card, knowing that the first player to fulfill the objective will place more tokens.

What about the game's mechanics ?

The game is a bit of a race. Ideally, you have to be the first player to go hunting to hope to spend your 8 totem tokens by achieving objectives and have a wider choice of tiles.

But on the other hand, you have to be careful with your cards to avoid running out of hunters.

So, will you do an “all-in” to try to be the first to play and fight a legendary animal that requires a minimum score of 13?

Don’t expect to fully complete your cave board. It’s a game that is played in about 30 minutes and victory arrives long before you’ve been able to cover your entire cave with frescoes.

The game is sometimes a bit of a puzzle with its polyominoes that will give you a hard time achieving some objectives.

What I liked... or not

Quality of the material

The game offers us a profusion of good quality polyominoes. The 3D cave board is also very nice.

Clear and precise rules

The rulebook is very pleasant to leaf through, you can find the information very easily and in no time at all.

Illustrations

I am very appreciative of the color palette used in this game as well as the character design chosen.

The frustration of not filling the entire cave board

As for me who likes to take my time, I find myself frustrated by how quickly you can discard your 8 totem tokens.
I wouldn't have minded having more tokens to spend to extend the playing time.

The box gets damaged quite fast

The ink in the box fades over time, I find it a bit disappointing.
I would have been willing to pay a little more for a box of higher quality.

Conclusion

Score

In my opinion, Prehistories is a good game, easy to play, easy to organize and easy to understand. .

It has a good depth of play, and requires a bit of thinking.

Nevertheless, I regret that the game runs at a crazy speed, the fault lies with the 8 poor little totem tokens and some objectives that are very quickly achieved.