Kids Say:

“We have played a couple other prehistoric-themed games, but Paleo is my favorite. I loved the cave drawings, primitive tools, tents, and hides. It’s a really really great cooperative game. The turns go quickly, and everyone feels that they are making important contributions to the team. I have played with two and three players (and observed a game with four), but I enjoyed the two-player game the most.  With more players, you end up using your turns to help other people rather than yourself. A lot of the game is about predicting what dangers and opportunities are on the cards, with small clues on the backs of the cards. You get better at this the more you play. I really like this mechanism, because it means we end up having more table-talk.”

“Father, over the many years of existence I have played many games, but this one… THIS one is the most averagely good one I have ever played. I liked that when I run out of cards, I get to ‘sleep,’ which means I can zone out while other people finish their turns.”

Adults say:

“I think it’s finally time to own up to the fact that we have a type…  Long-form cooperative games are my jam. They can be fantasy (Gloomhaven), historical fiction (Pandemic Legacy Season 0), or in the case of Paleo, pre-historical fiction.”

“Paleo has levels, but you can play them in any order, so there isn’t the sense of long-term growth and consequences that make those flagship legacy games so joyful. But Paleo has some advantages over the competition. It is easily digestible (like a burnt mastodon thigh) and much more accessible (like a cave with an open floor plan.) There are some quirky rules to figure out along the way, but it takes about 5 minutes to teach a newbie to play, and once you’ve got it down, you can wrap up a whole game in just over a half hour.”

“So let’s talk about this cave people theme. If we want to be scientifically accurate, we are either homo erectus, cro magnons or Neanderthals. I don’t remember the difference and I’m certainly not going to take 15 seconds to look it up. But suffice it to say, our characters were rocking loincloths and living exclusively in caves. Which means there must have been either a lot more caves or a lot fewer people around. (Seriously, have I even seen 15 caves in my life? Housing prices must have been astronomical in 10,000 B.C.E.)”

“Every turn, we step out of the cave to get some vitamin D, and do the requisite hunting/gathering. We also dabble a bit in the inventing game, which is easy, because nobody has invented anything yet. Fire? Great! Tents and spears? Brilliant? Holes in the ground? You’re a freaking genius! Letting our creative selves bloom is really what gives life meaning, and every time we push society a little closer to civilization, we celebrate by painting part of a mammoth on the wall. If we live long enough to finish this masterpiece, everyone wins.”

“But a lot of nastiness lurks outside of the cave, waiting to remind us that we are still squarley in the middle of the food chain. When we’ve lost, we’ve lost BIG -- like, major extinction-level die-offs at the hands of wolves, thorns, or starvation. Sometimes, we die for want of one more tiny stone. Why is that important to our survival? Because shut up, that’s why. Prehistoric life is not supposed to be fair.”

“Paleo is fast-paced, full of interaction with other players, and rife with deceptively simple decisions. Sure, the mechanics aren’t completely new, but why reinvent the wheel?"

"Oh, that’s right. Because the wheel hasn’t been invented the first time, yet.”