Publisher: AEG
Designers: Frédéric Henry and Guillaume Blossier
Artists: Guillaume Blossier, Miguel Coimbra, Édouard Guiton, Frédéric Henry, and Goulven Quentel
Genre: Push your luck exploration game
Year: 2009
Players: Two to six players
Ages: 10+
Playing time: 45-60 Minutes
MSRP: $49.95
So you want to be like Indiana Jones, eh? You can do just that in The Adventurers and the Temple of Chac from AEG games. The walls are closing in! There is a boulder right behind you! Watch out for the hot lava! Can you escape, before you are sealed in forever?
Featuring beautiful miniatures and exciting pieces to construct the traps of the temple, The Adventurers is one adventure you won’t want to miss!
In The Adventurers you are exploring through the Temple of Chac, the Mayan rain god, and basically robbing it of its treasures. Each player starts with 2 adventurers, because you’ll need the second one if the first one meets an untimely demise. They come in the form of nicely detailed unpainted plastic figures. I wish they had been painted, but that is asking a little much. I wish I had the skill to paint them myself.
The other components of this game are very cool. There is a miniature boulder that would really hurt if you flung it at someone. There are miniature walls that you move to squish lingering adventurers, and a bridge with removable planks that collapse as you walk across them. The artwork is very well done helps enhance the theme. The rules are a large, full color affair, very well done with many pictures and examples.
The most complicated thing about the game is figuring out the number of actions allowed each round for your character. Even with the examples, it took a minute to figure it out.
Tip: Number of actions
First figure out your load level. Your load level is equal to the number of treasure cards you are carrying (not the amount of treasure points, the actual number of cards).
0-3 Treasure Cards = Load Level 2
4-6 Treasure Cards = Load Level 3
7-9 Treasure Cards = Load Level 4
10-12 Treasure Cards = Load Level 5
Next, the player controlling the dice rolls all five dice. Every player gets 1 action point for each die rolled that is equal to or higher than your load level number.
So if your load level is 2 and Bilbo (your favorite Hobbit game player friend) rolls the dice and gets a 1,2,2,2,2. You would get 4 actions this turn. Unfortunately for Bilbo, his load level was 3, so he gets no actions at all this turn. Suddenly he vanishes!
You use your action points to perform various tasks, like moving, searching for treasure and the like. The temple itself is broken in to several sections that you need to explore, survive, and escape. If at any point your first adventurer is killed, you can bring in your second adventurer once the rolling boulder rolls past a certain point on the board.
The first section is the squishing walls room. The walls move in while you look for treasures. You can either get out as fast as you can or take the chance and look for treasure and hope that you don’t get squished by the collapsing walls. This room also contains glyphs that you can decipher that let you know which tiles in the lava room are booby trapped. A very nice bit of information to have.
Right after the adventurers first turn a giant boulder is released and will pursue the adventurers throughout the entire game. It moves a random amount of distance each turn, but this random amount does go higher with every turn. If you ever get caught by the boulder, you’d better get your second adventurer ready because you are a goner. Once the boulder hits the exit at the far end of the temple, the game is over. Any adventurer still inside the temple is trapped and gets no points.
Next is the lava room, where you can chance crossing the blocks floating on the lava and collect treasure, but some of the blocks are booby trapped and will plunge you to your death. You can avoid the whole thing, but there is less opportunity for treasure then, and you need treasure to win.
Finally, you have to choose whether to swim across the raging river or cross the rickety bridge, there are plenty of chances to gain treasure, but the boulder is always following you, and the river can sweep you to your doom over the waterfall. The bridge can also collapse and send you to your doom. An evil adventurer can sabatoge the bridge so the other players can’t cross it, nasty.
After any surviving players make it to the exit, the treasures are added up and the one with the most treasure wins. If both of your adventurers were killed, then you are out and you lost.
I really enjoy this game, you can feel the tension build as you go through the temple, as that boulder is always right behind you, waiting to flatten your adventurer. It is a game for all ages, even my 4 year old enjoys playing with the boulder and the miniatures.
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