Mission: Review - Explorers
A new strange world has been found, and explorers are doing what they do best—exploring. The new land has been hidden for years. Levitating rocks, of which this world is made of, constantly move around; keeping this mysterious land out of sight. Now you and your friends scour the land looking for temples, villages, and gems. Plan your route across the land wisely to become the best explorer out there!
In Explorers, a new game designed by Phil Walker-Harding and published by Ravensburger, you take on the role of an explorer wandering a new world. Your goal: find food, explore temples and villages, and search for gems. The game takes place over four rounds, and then plays add up points earned from all the rounds. The player with the most points wins!
This is a flip-and-write style game. So each round you are going to be flipping over a tile that shows two types of terrain and choosing one of them to mark on your map. The starting player gets to mark three spaces of the same terrain on their map. All other players choose to either pick that same terrain and mark two spaces or choose the other terrain and mark three spaces. At the end of the round when all the tiles have been flipped, players add up points for gems, food, and villages. Then a new round starts and play continues until the end of the fourth round.
I really love the flip/roll-and-write genre in general. I like how simple most of these types of games are, but even more complicated ones are great. The feeling of checking off a box just makes these games so fun. And Explorers is no exception here. I really enjoyed playing this game, and can see myself playing it for quite awhile.
The game offers plenty of variability and replayability. The expert rules change how scoring is done and really make things more challenging. The game also comes with a bunch of different achievements that you can use during the game as public objectives for players to meet and score. All of these ideas added together never make the game feel overwhelming or like you are trying to accomplish too much.
I do have two relatively small issues with the game. The first one being that it is easy to accidentally erase marks on your board when you are making new marks, as everything is written with a dry erase marker. My other issue is that having four rounds can sometimes make it a little easy to complete everything. Again, these are relatively small issues for me.
Phil Walker-Harding really is a master at making easy to learn, hard to master games. If you enjoy this type of game, then Explorers is a must play for you. The gameplay is easy and intuitive. The components are great as well. I do wish you could play with more than four players, but I imagine you could buy two copies and bring the player count to eight without any problems. Overall, this is a game worth checking out.
Likes
+Quick and easy setup
+Easy to learn
+Replay value and variability
Dislikes
-Dry erase markers make it easy to accidentally erase marks
If this sounds like a game that would be fun for you, head on over to any of our two Mission: Board Games locations or order a copy online here.
About the author: Will Purdy is an avid board game enthusiast and barista at Urban Prairie Coffee in Mission, KS. Follow him on instagram @boardgamebarista or on Board Game Geek: fidgetyrain