Relic Expedition board game now available
Deep in the heart of some unknown jungle lie many relics just waiting to be discovered. Can you beat your fellow explorers in collecting the treasures and get the next helicopter flight out? And are you equipped well enough to fight off the jungle animals lurking around the bend?
If you’re ready to find out, then join the Relic Expedition.
Relic Expedition is a newly published jungle exploration and collection board game to play with your family. We’re excited about Relic Expedition hitting store shelves this month because we first played and previewed a prototype of the board game last year.
At the time we previewed the game, Relic Expedition was fresh on Kickstarter looking for funding. Foxtrot Games was looking to raise an initial $25,000 in funding to get the game published. By the end of the Kickstarter campaign, they had raised $40,000 and the game production kicked in.
According to Caleb, even playing the prototype copy that we received was “awesome”. And after playing with plain board pieces and stand-in tokens, we couldn’t wait to see what the game would be like with finished art and components.
Well, we’re happy to report that they’re fantastic. The components in Relic Expedition are great and the game is still a fun draw.
Taking a quick look at the prototype images vs. the published version and you’ll see how nice it is.
The Gameplay
We gave a detailed rundown of how to play Relic Expedition in our preview and the game play is still the same. Players are searching for a set of 4 matching relics. They can either be 4 matching symbols or 4 matching colors.
Once a player has a set, they can hit a helicopter spot to fly home and win the game.
It’s very straight forward, but the enjoyment is in the exploration in hunting for those relics to make a set.
Players take turns rolling 2 dice. One die indicates the number of actions that the player can take on their turn. And the other die indicates which animal type (if any) will move.
As part of their actions, players will draw tiles and place them next to the tile their pawn is on to further explore the jungle . They may uncover relics, vines, tools, quicksand, or animals along the way.
Or they may come across a large river or cave in need of exploring further.
In our games, we’ve found that everyone likes to head out in their own direction to explore the jungle. Which can be nice when finding relic tiles – since no one else is around to snag them up first. But it can also be dangerous to be out on your own. Because if you run across some jungle animals, they could give you trouble.
The Backpack
One of the cool aspects of the game is the backpack. Each player has a backpack where they can store up to 8 items – either relics or tools. And if players pick up a 9th item, they’ll have to choose which to drop. Which means at some point during the game, players will have to choose which types of relics they’re going to leave behind.
Players can also pick up and store tools that will help them along the way. For example, sedation darts will come in very handing when facing a wild boar. Vines are great for getting over quicksand. Machetes are great for cutting quickly through the jungle. Bananas will distract the monkeys so they don’t steal any of your backpack items. And climbing gear, headlamp, and a raft are also necessary to explore the mountain, cave, and river along the way.
What would you choose to keep in your backpack?
The Only Downside
Relic Expedition is a great name for the game because the expedition part is a lot of fun.
Racing out to explore new tiles, hoping to uncover relics and jungle features is super enjoyable. And sending jungle animals after your opponent explores is fun too.
The only downside we’ve run into is the uncertainty in how many actions you’ll get on your turn. It’s left up to the roll of the die of whether you’ll have 2, 3, or 4 actions to use. If you keep rolling 2’s, then you’ll never be able to outrun the animals or use the helicopter spots. It also makes it very hard to plan your next turn ahead of time.
Sure there’s a lot of luck in the game – which tiles you’ll uncover to expand the jungle, which relics show up in which spot, which tool you’ll draw out of the bag. All that is fantastic. That’s what keeps the game light and fun. We’d just like a bit of control over the number of actions.
For example, we just played a ‘new to us’ game that let players choose whether they would use 2, 3, or 4 actions on their turn. With the catch being that you can’t choose the same number of actions until you’ve used the others as well. So if I wanted 4 actions this turn, then next time I’ll have to pick 2 or 3 actions. So everyone gets the same number of actions over 3 turns, but they have control on when to use more or less.
I think we’ll try something of this nature for number of actions with Relic Expedition. Because for sure, Relic Expedition has found a good spot on our game shelves.
How does Relic Expedition score on the “Let’s Play Again” game meter?
Like we just mentioned, Relic Expedition will be readily accessible on our board game shelves. It’s a light board game that’s great for family play.
Watching the jungle expand as you explore in different directions is a lot of fun. And collecting colorful relics along the way while keeping clear of animals provides a great setting for an enjoyable time.
We’re contacted very frequently about board games going up on Kickstarter. And we regularly decline to preview such games. And that’s because we know most of our readers (you) are looking for games that they can buy for their family ‘today’.
In the case of Relic Expedition, we’re happy to report that the game turned out great.
The game became a reality and is now available for people everywhere to get for their family.
Thanks Foxtrot Games for a fun family board game!
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