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Prehistories is a two to five player game designed by Alexandre Emerit and Benoit Turpin and published by The Flying Games. It sees players leading a prehistoric tribe of hunters going out and catching prey. The game features simultaneous bidding, hand management and tile laying. The bidding mechanism was very clever in as much as the more hunters you have, the bigger the prey you can catch but the slower you will be. Smaller hunting parties can go faster and be first in turn order, but they can only catch smaller prey.
The prey tokens that you collect are placed on your “cave wall” (i.e. player board) and are arranged in such a way as to complete certain objectives that are on display. When you meet the requirements of the objective you place your totem token on it and the first player to place all their tokens is the winner of the game. You can check out a full review of the core game [here]
Two years on from its release Prehistories: Evolution is now available. This is a relatively small box expansion that adds a fair amount of content. What it offers is four additional modules that can be incorporated into the core game. These modules come in sealed envelopes and contain a bit of backstory and special new rules and gameplay elements to add to the core game.
Final Thoughts
Part of the fun of this expansion was discovering what the new modules added. I enjoyed opening up the envelopes, reading the back stories and incorporating the new elements into the core game. So, the review of the expansion is going to be as spoiler free as possible and more general feelings so that you can also experience the excitement of opening the envelopes and discovering the new content.
There is a decent amount of content in this Prehistories: Evolution expansion. After opening the fourth and final envelope I was pleased with what came in the box. The way the new modules are introduced I think is a nice way of doing it. The publisher could have thrown all the content together in the box and said use this bit with that and this other bit over here etc. By adding it as modular envelopes 1) it adds a sense of discovery and excitement as you get to open something new each game and 2) makes adding in the new content easier for people who may not be used to large expansions. Prehistories was always an accessible, family weight game and the expansion carries on with this trend.
Sticking To The Mold
The modulars themselves are not groundbreaking but they are fun and interesting. They offer new ways to hunt, new tokens and new tiles which can be added to the core game with relative ease. If you are familiar with the core game of Prehistories then you should have no problem grasping the new concepts introduced in the expansion.
I like the new content that is added (Man! It's hard to review this without giving away specifics and spoiling the expansion).It adds variety and replayability to the game. It also brings new things to the table to keep it fresh and interesting. Like I said above, the new modules are not groundbreaking and that is totally fine by me, but they are certainly worth it if you liked the core game. There is some ability to mix and match the modules together but not all of them can be used at the same time. The additional content also fits in the core box which is always a big plus in my books.
Overall, Prehistories: Evolution is a solid expansion. It does not revolutionise the core game but fans of Prehistories will not go amiss at picking up this expansion.