Each round, you’ll draft a group of Workers from the Worker Database to run your park for a full season. Then you’ll divide up those Workers to take on the various tasks of building and running your Park - gathering ancient DNA, cloning new Dinos, buying new attractions, and keeping your patrons safe from a toothy demise. The better you run your park, the more Victory Points you’ll score! With DNA to collect, dinosaurs to create, buildings to construct, workers to hire and enclosures to admire, the two to four players participating will have their work cut out for them in Dinosaur World. At a high level though, you play as a bunch of kids who are going to a school near an experimental particle accelerator called The Loop. Strange things keep happening and the kids all get curious and decide to investigate. You have a story to play through, but you also need to do all those kid things like homework and taking the dog for a walk. If you neglect this stuff you may get grounded. That means you can’t go out and investigate and things start slipping by. There are definitely a few rough edges with Tales from the Loop. There were a few moments when it felt like a rule was missing. But if you can see past that and really get into the exploration of the fantastic setting, you’re going to have a good time. Now with dinosaurs! In addition to these awesome components, this expansion adds some alternate rules to play with. At the beginning of the game, players will draft these aquatic dinos instead of the standard set of dinos. These tiles have special end-game scoring rules on them, steering your strategy in different directions.

As with any form of entertainment, triumph is often accompanied by tragedy - which is why your investors demand that you take every precaution (and ensure every visitor signs the safety waiver) before you show them the wonders of Dinosaur World!

Examples of the three dinosaur types, from left to right: Herbivores, Small Carnivores, Hard Carnivores. That’s too long for a solo game. As a parent, I approach the gaming experience more and more from an accessibility mindset: what game is the easiest one to get to the table? Which game offers nice, crunchy decisions with a setup, play and teardown time in under an hour? What gives me chances at near infinite replayability? Which one will my wife play with me more consistently? You might face some visitor deaths along the way, but don’t worry - as long as your park is “safer” than your competitors’, it won’t hurt your score! Once players have finished the construction of their parks, they’re then free to improve them wherever they see fit, attracting even more visitors and wowing their guests with exciting new exhibits. Most importantly, players will have to ensure the safety of their visitors, as they will lose points if too many of their guests are tragically eaten by dinosaurs. Thanks to advances in science and technology, resurrecting dinosaurs is now a piece of cake, and crowds of tourists are enjoying the wonders of dino amusements around the world. As ambitious park developers, players in the upcoming board game Dinosaur World dream of building and running their own prehistoric attractions, as long as the visitors stay undigested long enough for the park to remain open.

Sorry. Had to pause and talk dice. But if you’ve played any of the Dinoverse games, you know I’m right!Now, here’s one set of stuff that is NOT in Dinosaur World: Specialist cards, which were so good in the previous Dinoverse games (although they are here in the solo game, strangely). I like that getting specialized workers has been streamlined here. I need someone better at making me money? I need green meeples. That’s great. But the Specialists are so good and add so much variety to every playthrough. Dinosaur World was designed by Brian Lewis - co-creator of the original Dinosaur Island and its expansion, Totally Liquid - Marissa Misura and David McGregor, who both co-created the unconventional dungeon-crawler game Fungeon Party. Whichever player holds the most points by the end of the game, is named the winner of Dinosaur World. Pandasaurus Games is the publisher behind Dinosaur World and is best known for releasing titles such as the family board game Machi Koro, roll-and-write series Qwinto and the post-apocalyptic survival game Wasteland Express Delivery Service.

These new dinos grant higher victory point levels, but it comes with increased threat as well. However, their dual types are quite versatile, as they can satisfy the various objectives and tiles seen in the game! Jeeple Tour – Plan your Jeeple’s route to score the most excitement and/or most potential tourist deaths TheJeepleTour stage injects a dose of reality into the gameand alsopresents a charming logistical puzzle. As you start each tour from the Welcome Centre tile, playersmustconsider wheretheyplace attractions to keep them accessible. As new tileshave to be connected on at least one side, there is a huge amount of freedom in how you build your park. At the end of round three, the Welcome Centre tile will move three spaces away and become the Park Entrance. This means youhave tothink carefully about where to put your attractions so that you can still get to them later in the game. Bored To Extinction

These are the questions I ask, but I get that for some people, roll-and-write games are not for them. Some players can also hurdle the challenge of getting a big game to a big table with ease; in that case, I think Dinosaur World is going to fit best. The scientists in Dinosaur World never thought to ask if they should. They have decided to tinker with nature itself by combining the DNA of different dinosaurs to create brand new species never seen before.

I was torn between this one or Dinosaur Island Rawr ‘n’ Write, but as I’ve already mentioned the big version of that, I figured I’d pop this underappreciated gem on the list instead. This is a great little roll and write that has you building up a dinosaur park. That is definitely a popular theme here, Jurassic Park has a lot to answer for! Anyways, with Dino World you’re building up a dino park with some randomised facilities to give you different scoring conditions each time you play. You’ve also got a different set of research cards which give you access to those sort of ‘re-roll a die’ powers you get in roll and write games. Dinosaur World has 17 different types of dino meeples (the deluxe version that I’m using for review does, anyway; the retail version just uses a single type of green wooden dino-meeple to represent all the herbivores in the game). In many ways, that’s cool. Or, it’s cool until someone says, The triumph of science that led to dinosaurs returning to the world once more has become public knowledge. New parks spring up regularly, often beginning operations even before everything has been finalized. There is no shortage of patrons eager to be entertained by these returned species in new and exciting ways. However, as with any form of entertainment, elements of triumph are often accompanied by elements of tragedy. This means it is of the utmost importance that you take every precaution by ensuring each visitor signs the safety waiver before enjoying the wonders of Dinosaur World!This is especially true when you consider solo play. I only played Dinosaur World once solo for this review, and that was enough to confirm what I already guessed: Dinosaur Island Rawr ‘n Write is simply the better game for a single player, mainly because there is no setup/teardown time. You can get all of that Dinoverse magic in about 20 minutes. It took me about 75 minutes to set up, play solo, and put away Dinosaur World. Guests are always looking for something new and more exciting, and it's not like nature was gonna make new Dinosaur types.