Cooperative games can be a bit tricky for my group. Otter, absolutely loves them. He specifically loves the discussion and collaboration that comes from working together to solve a problem. He wants to analyze every possibility to arrive at the correct conclusion that will lead the team to victory. Unfortunately, this also means that it takes 4 hours to play Pandemic.

It doesn’t actually take 4 hours, but it sure feels like it sometimes. I’ve already mentally decided what I think the best course of action is, but he wants to talk through every possibility to be sure. And to his credit, sometimes we find a plan that is more efficient or just plain better than the one I had in mind. I should also point out that Otter wins at more games than I do.

Regardless, it was his desire to play Paleo when we met at our local board game café. I was a little hesitant to spend our evening with a cooperative game when we could be playing any of the new and exciting games that were in the library, but I’m nothing if not adaptable.

Paleo, as mentioned, is a cooperative game for 1 to 4 players. Designed by Peter Rustemeyer, with art by Dominik Mayer, Ingram Schell and Franz-Georg Stämmele, and published by Hans im Gluck in 2020. In Paleo, each player controls a group of pre-historic humans in their quest to create art. Kind of, the victory condition is to acquire 5 cave painting tiles, while the loss conditions is accruing 5 skulls. Each player is given a deck of cards, and each turn, each player draws 3 cards face down in front of them. The card backs depict a scene from nature, such as a babbling brook, a snow-capped mountain, or a dense forest. These backgrounds give you clues as to what is likely on the other side. There isn’t much wood on the mountain top, but there is meat and rocks up there.

Each player picks one card to attempt, and returns the others to their deck, then, everyone reveals their card simultaneously. Most cards will give you a couple challenges you can attempt to earn some resources, or give you the opportunity to help others complete their quests. Many of the cards will have you discarding cards off the top of your deck in return for resources, or asking you to acquire the correct number of tags amongst your tribe and tools to triumph over a challenge. When your deck runs you, you ‘go to sleep’, and when everyone’s decks are depleted, you move to the night phase. In the night phase, each tribe member requires a food, and there are a couple of end of day challenges that must be met. Falling short in any of those objectives will earn you one of those game losing skulls.

Earning the victory point mural pieces are no small feat, but they can be found in a variety of places. Some appear in the crafting deck, others appear after a particularly difficult battle, and so on. Either way, once you gather 5, you win the game. Paleo offers several scenarios, which has you adding some extra secret cards, different nighttime objectives, special crafting recipes, and adding a couple scenario specific cards to the main deck. The first scenario is focused around hunting mammoths, so most of the cards you add will have you hunting down those oversized dust bunnies.

Paleo rose to prominence when it won the 2021 Kennerspiel des Jahres, one of the most prestigious awards in cardboard, edging out fellow nominees Fantasy Realms and Lost Ruins of Arnak. While I personally don’t put a lot of stock into the Spiel des Jahres, I can’t help but pay attention to the games that get the Spiel nod, and Paleo is no different.

Starting the game with only two members of your tribe, doesn’t afford you a lot of leeway. Because all the game’s objectives are shuffled into a single deck, there is the chance that your first draw will be something that you cannot accomplish, even if everyone at the table pooled together to overcome. I’m talking specifically about the mammoth that requires 8 combat tags that I drew on my very first turn. But we can also blame me for making an ignorant decision.

The tribe members each generally have one tag, and often will come with a one time use benefit. If you can get lucky, you can start to build an engine. Acquire wood and rocks to craft a hand axe, giving you a perpetual combat and craft tag. If you’re unlucky, you’ll spend your one time use tools to overcome a challenge, and then be left weakened for the rest of the day. Do you want to discard your pelt to avoid a wound now, even though you need two pelts to craft the required tent for everyone to sleep in at the end of the day?

Most often, the cards aren’t difficult, but they do evoke a strong theme. The deer and dodo cards offer a large supply of food, but are then completely exiled from the game, as, they no longer exist after you eat them. The berry bush can either supply one food, and be used again next round, or three food and a wood but is then exiled from the game, evoking a little story in your head about your tribe ripping the bush out of the ground for a short term gain, long term loss.

The collaboration is pretty gentle, one player might announce they’re going to try and tackle one of their bramble cards, which will inspire others to choose more friendly cards so they can have the opportunity to help each other out, should the situation require it. Sometimes, you’ll pick a card thinking it’ll be a leisurely stream, but it turns out to be its own hazard, preventing you from helping others. There is a memory element to Paleo. Sometimes you’ll fail a challenge, like if you flip over the mountain card with the mammoth, only to be asked to produce 8 weapon tags. You’ll remember that every time one of the mammoth mountain cards comes up in the deck, and while you might skip past it for a few days in a row, eventually you’ll find yourself in a position to take it on.

Because all the events you’ll undertake are part of the same deck, there is the chance that you’ll just happen to pick the ones meant for the end game and are wildly too expensive for you to overcome at the start of the game. Sure, now you know what you’re working towards, but a string of these in a row will set you up for failure, all with little to no opportunity for players to avoid it. There were more than one rounds where players couldn’t resolve their own events because they were missing the required tags, and none of the other players needed their assistance. It’s not interesting to skip whole turns, thank you very much.

So many interesting decisions…

What I liked most about Paleo is the same thing that fills me with excitement when it comes to playing any Legacy games, and that’s the discovery. I LOVE earning the secret cards or revealing new dreams and crafting recipes, just to discover exactly what this treats the game has in store for us. But I also felt quite frustrated, as it felt like we were embarking on a quest of attrition. We started the game with 5 food, and at the start of each subsequent round, we had less than that. We were never making a surplus, instead, our resources were slowly dwindling as we milled the decks, searching for those victory conditions. I loved the moments when we found them, it was genuinely exciting. But I don’t believe that Paleo holds up to repeat plays. For me, once I’ve discovered the secrets and surprises, I have no motivations to return.

Paleo is a good, fun game, but I don’t see how it’s game of the year. The frustrations of an unlucky start kneecapping your ability to grow makes me hesitant to recommend Paleo in the first place. It certainly provides a unique experience, but I didn’t feel like I was having ‘fun’ in the strictest sense of the word. When we lost, it felt unavoidable, and when we won, it just felt like luck was on our side. There are many scenarios still to explore, but when I have the itch to play a cooperative game, there are so many others that I would rather pull off the shelf. For a thematic experience, Burgle Bros and Burgle Bros 2 are eminent favourites, and for a more puzzly experience, Pandemic: Fall of Rome and Viticulture World are both very strong contenders.