This game takes the Settlers mechanic and places it in a new setting with some tweaks.
This is a very nice little game played on a fixed board unlike normal settlers. Resources are scarcer and are different for this game being Fur, Bone and Meat. You build camps and explorers and move them out of Africa where you start and explore the other continents by increasing your progress on one of several tracks around the main board. Each of the tracks has 5 levels and represent clothing, construction, food and hunting. The first player to reach level 5 of any track gains a victory point card.
In order to move across certain areas of the board you need to have made progress in some of these tracks. The progress needed is representative of the requirements needed to make that journey.
Resources are used to build camps, explorers or to make progress on the tracks. Players can trade these during their turn. At various points on the map, usually in hard to reach or out of the way places there are exploration counters which are either move the Neanderthal or Sabretooth Tiger (which replace the robber), place a desert tile in Africa or gain you a victory point. As you explore the other continents and set down camps you collect tribe tokens (worth 1 VP) these are placed at the corners of the hexes. As the game progresses Africa slowly becomes a desert therefore drying up the resources forcing players to move their camps out. This is a great addition to the game making you change the numbers you have for various resources.
As normal it is the first to 10 VP's that wins the game but there are several ways to achieve this and it adds a nice twist to the standard Settler mechanics. I would recommend this to fans of the original settlers as they will already be familiar with much of the gameplay.
