Cavemen Fighting Dinosaurs. 'Nuff Said! Hot

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'm trying to get some more games that will appeal to my son, I've been looking at Downfall of Pompeii, but that only plays four which leaves someone out in my house. This sounds like a good alternative.

Ringo Starr's Caveman and Escape from Colditz in one article. Michael, I have a man crush on you. If Ken can have man crushes, I can too. The game sounds fun and I hadn't heard of it either so thanks for the heads-up!
Cheers,
Van

Only one thing tops "Cavemen Fighting Dinosaurs".

And, you guessed it, it's...

Sorry -- I take full credit for Ringo. Anytime I can squeeze in a reference to a movie with Ringo and The Tuze..I can't resist.

Well done indeed good sir! I salute you!

I was really interested in your comment about the "X-factor". Games that appeal to both the hobby gamer and the general public.

There is just simply not enough of these "X-factor" games and if there were I think boardgaming would be better off. Fantasy Flight's Silver Line games could almost be accused of having an "X-factor" but these simply do not have the "sheen" to push them into this category, in my opinion.

Companies tend to focus either exclusively on "Gamer games" or "General Public" games and really don't produce enough of these crossover games. I think we would see an upswing in boardgaming if a concerted effort to produce "X-Factor" games was initiated!

Wow... you managed to capture the greatest cinematic moment of Ringo Star's illustrious movie career.

I would buy the game if they somehow put Ringo in the artwork!

-M

oh and here what the BGG elite think....
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Dan Blum
(tool)
flag
BGG Admin

3

No one that I played this with liked it very much. The randomness overwhelms the decision-making. Nor does it satisfy as an experience game - there are plenty of fairly random experience games I enjoy, but this is fairly abstract and treats the theme cavalierly.

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Wow, where did you get that comment Mal? It sounds like where ever that came from must be full of stick-in-the-mud fun murderers more interested in splitting hairs and trainspotting than having fun.

The X Factor is an idea I've had ever since I played HEROSCAPE. When HEROSCAPE came out, I, like most of us, was pretty entrenched in the hobby and assumed that I would never again buy a mass-market game. When I saw early reports about it, I thought it looked really cool and wound up visiting every chain store in town looking for a copy. When I played it, I realized that it was the kind of game that had both very real hobby gamer appeal as well as the right ratio of complexity/simplicity, production value, and charm to work in a more mainstream setting. These are really the games, not supposed "gateway games" like TRANSAMERICA or TICKET TO RIDE, that create new gamers and promote the health of the hobby.

Games that have this X Factor are few and far between, particularly on mass market shelves. SURVIVE, AXIS AND ALLIES, and even the RISK updates are good examples and there's actually a lot of UK games that have it (like COLDITZ). The thing is, when these games come out now they're usually wasted on the hobby industry. BETRAYAL AT THE HOUSE ON THE HILL is the perfect example. That game could have been a phenomenon with the right marketing and distribution channels. In a very real way I could see that game being sold at Starbucks every year around Halloween. It's a game anybody can play, it has the X Factor, and it's got a really immediate, approachable, and appealing theme that draws people in and makes them _want_ to play the game if only just to see what happens.

I think one thing that X Factor games have in common is that you can almost explain how to play by describing them- I strongly believe that if you're playing with non-gamers and you start throwing out phrases like "victory point track", "turn order", "phases", and what not you've lost them already. Some folks will get through that, but a lot check out right there. I've had non-gamers bail on CARCASSONNE after trying to explain that the meeple can represent four different things. Part of the genius of HEROSCAPE was that it took hardcore miniatures gaming concepts like line of sight and elevation and made them immediately apparent so that the player could just see it and it made complete sense. You could describe a situation like so- "My guy is higher than yours so he gets an extra attack die".

For mass market games to work they have to have this level of passive, descriptive rules presentation. No charts, nothing to consult, no arcane hobby terms, no feeling that the game is going to require a level of commitment. Further, strong theme, interaction, and narrative (going back to the descriptive thing again) have to be there to give all of it meaning- try explaining the abstractions of PUERTO RICO to somebody who's never played a game before.

Steve is right- designers and publishers should be pursuing these kinds of games, but the problem is that when you come from the hobby your perspective changes. Either you think mass market games are dumb and somehow uncivilized or you've become blinded to the fact that even the easier Eurogames are actually very complex to a nongamer. Example- elsewhere here at F:AT we were discussing WORLD AT WAR: EISENBACH GAP. It's an incredibly easy game to me- having played wargames, there's a lot of concepts and information that I could ascertain just from looking at the pieces. There's only 8 or so pages of rules, so it's well below wargame standards. Yet if I were to try to teach it to someone without a gaming background, it'd be a tough sell and they'd likely get very confused unless they're one of those people that just pick up on complex ideas quickly.

CAVEMAN fits the bill for the X Factor game almost perfectly...there are a few gamer-ish bits (like a five phase turn) but you could put it out, give a quick overview that boils down to a hybrid description of rules and theme, and have people playing and enjoying it within five minutes. The theme is engaging and appealing, and most people (contrary to what the Eurogamers tried to tell us) like games where they can muck around with other people and laugh at their misfortunes. It has immediate results and a definite sense that what you're doing makes an impact- no waiting until the end of the game to see who won by a point or two.

Jess,

This is an excellent family game. Check out e-bay. I got my copy, including shipping for less than what it has been selling for at the online game stores.

Michael,

Patrick Swayze is right on the mark for the caveman. But the cavewomen are Elisabeth Shue

Dan Blum completely can't stand luck in his games. He is, however, one of the people who knows more about games than I do, and I have bought quite a few of his esoteric cast-offs.

Sadly one of those cast offs is not his copy of Hotel Life. We should talk seriously about that game. By the guy who did Kremlin. It is Fawlty Towers the game, and I watched my pristine perfect hotel go up in flames as a boxer beat up a computer salesmen who complained about the noise. The salesman pulled the fire alarm evacuating the hotel, and causing my consumption patient to have to move to a hotel with a doctor, which she somehow ended up sleeping with the entire rock band in an adjacent room.

While a dinosaur was rampaging through the village eating all of our minibars. Seriously. Another hotel had a problem with a kid with a slingshot who terrorized the hotel until half of the staff quit.

I am convinced that it is one of the truly great games, and so hard to find that even close friends of the designer cannot find copies. So my only hope is to win the lottery so I can get enough money to publish a new edition.

Best X-Factor I've encountered in a game in years.

Ticket to ride is soooo an X factor game.

Great review, except for all of the author's left wing commie pinko bullshit. Fuck saving the dinosaurs, I want a game where I can nuke them.

Thanks for this, it looks interesting. In Germany I just saw it for 27 Euro (around 40 dollar). However, I wonder how it compares to Valley of the Mammoths, which I already own. Although it is not exactly the same topic, Valley also makes for a silly cutthroat caveman game. It doesn't have dinosaurs (or Ringo), but at least it has volcanoes and wooly mammoths.

Gamesurplus.com has Caveman for $59.95 with free shipping on your entire order. Not a bad deal at all.

Ah, this is just a Euro in Ameritrash clothing. The vast majority of the game is spent running around picking up cherries and pitching tents. Needless to say, in short order you end up "having babies", which automatically puts any game into "Super-Lame" territory in my book.

Stick with Survive! where the main order of business is killing things.

Robert has one of the more refined senses of what makes a game good or bad that I've ever seen- basically the paradigm is that "I own it=good, you own it=bad". Plus he was in a drunken stupor when we played the game, during the game he started eating pizza forgetting that he had an expensive Italian dinner just an hour or so before.

Damn Uba, you're right...I think we went with Connelly because she's more hairy. My first impulse was Jamie Gertz.

Need to play VALLEY sometime...looks like fun.

Surprised no one has posted this yet....

You're confusing me with Bill Kenyon, Barnes. Besides, you're looking at it all the wrong way. I only own games games that are worth owning. The fact that I don't own Caveman means that it's not worth owning, which means that it's not worth playing. It's a simple and zen-like system.

Caveman really wants to be a Milton Bradley/ Schmidt Spiele family game in an oversized box with more plastic pieces. It is clearly a family game with very simple rules, and a 45 minute playing time.

Valley of the Mammoths is clearly an old-school hobby game. Moderately complex rules--roughly on par with Civ. I prefer Valley to Civ. Lots more luck, lots more wacky action cards to abuse people. Lots more sudden reversals of fortune and backstabbing. (I remember rolling a giant rock on someone's village after mastodons trampled their other two villages into the dust.

I also remember charging most of my males into a village left almost entirely undefended with a large group of women. They were Amazons. The other players then began helping themselves to my lonely and suddenly single women.

That poster kicks ass. It should be on the front page.

Maybe if Steve Avery gets off his ass and submits a GAMMARAUDERS review for us, we'll do it.

I played Valley of the Mammoths about three months ago and the girls in the group couldn't stop giggling at the penis cartoons on some of the cards.

I think it is fair to say the gals just couldn't keep their hands off of them...

Sweet, even as a Green Anarchist i dig this..

Speaking as MAG MD

First thanks to Michael for his very rich and kind review. We set out at MAG to create exactly the X factor type of game he si commenting on. Something that is fun for the family and appealing enough for regular gamers.

In fact MAG comes from a very particular origin - watching my son and friends glued to their computers and game consoles. We really wanted to do something to get kids off computers and getting the family interacting properly. The answer to this partly was to let my 12 year old come up with some game ideas. Matthew came up with the basic concept for CAVEMAN and we built it from there testing it in game shops and at schools. We have days of fun playing board games with him now.

It seems to have hit the right balance so far with lots of very pleasing comments around. The game is going well in the Uk and US and we are talking about it for Italy at present. The film 10,000 BC should create some good pre-historia vibe for us as well.

The game is very much aimed to be viable as a high st game - dino models, visuals etc. The box lid was done by the chap who did the Aliens movie posters. We can tweak it a fair but with more pieces etc. if we can get enough volume. We are now getting into discussions with game companies to see if we can manage that for Xmas 2008. Keep your fingers crossed and give us any positive vibes you can -its not an asy market place.

And watch out for that 3 red dice T-Rex.!!

Oh and Michael - good spot about Colditz - one of my all time fave x factor games. And indeed exactly the inspiration for the collection method in fact in caveman!! It would be great to do a caveman set with figures for the cave people in fact.

Oh and by the way we now have poker chip based deluxe pieces that will be on our website www.makeagame.eu in the neat week or so. Thick stackable plastic pieces with stickers to go in their centres for those who like a weightier feel to their cavewomen! :-)

And finally watch out for COLOURS and INVASION EARTH - two more games on the block for this winter.

Si

Simon Hall MD MAG