Akrotiri Full Game Play Through

welcome to John gets games today I'll be doing a full two-player playthrough of Akrotiri this is a tiling and pick up a deliverer game where you are searching through the Greek ocean trying to find islands where you can excavate ancient temples all the while you're trying to pick up Goods and sell them in order to fund these expeditions so let's jump right into playing it before we start I want you to know that I'm going to be explaining the rules to this game as we actually play so I'm going to jump right into the beginning and just explain things as they become relevant so here in the middle we have the starting tile it is the size of for regular tiles as you can see right here and we're not quite ready to begin because each of the two players needs to place a one tile down onto the board to kind of seed it and make it different I'm going to play as black and I'm also the start player as denoted by this little token here which means I'm going to place my setup tile first now the way we place this tile is the same way we play styles as the game it goes on so I'll explain those rules really quickly it's quite simple you put it orthogonal the adjacent to another tile you can ever go half and half like this they have to match up like that but no matter which way you place this tile there's always going to be a legal connection with these white shipping routes and the different islands after the tile is placed we need to put two resources onto it there's a great mountain icon in the bottom left which means we have to put a great resource cube onto that island however we also need to put a single resource cube onto an island that's on this tile here but not the one we place the first cube on if we look at this market board here we see there are four different resource colors in the game we already put one gray down so let's go ahead and grab a red and put it on this island here and now we have white who will put their starting tile right here they have to put a great resource there and white chooses to put another gray resource on to this island here the last thing we can do before we actually start playing is each of us is going to get dealt two gold cards we're going to look at them pick one and discard the other now since I'm playing black we're going to take a look at what we have here now I have a choice between this card here which is going to give me victory points for putting temples on very large islands and this one which has to do with keeping temples not connected with each other and this one's a little convoluted let's go with this one here I'll explain the specifics of how these points work as we go on I'm not going to show the thought process behind the white players so just know that they discard this card here and this is going to be one of them game cards so here's my player area at the beginning of the game we see that I get three actions per turn which are denoted by these three little fishie tokens I have two money and then down here is my secret endgame goal card I'll keep it face-up but normally that be facedown and here we have two different maps the idea of this game is we're going to be sailing around this Greek ocean trying to excavate ancient ruins and the only way we can find them is by having these maps lead us there the reason I have these maps tilted to their side is because the location of this temple is relative to where the player is sitting normally you'd have player 1 sitting here player 2 sitting here with all of the map tiles in the middle but for the purpose of filming this video it makes sense to all be going from one side so I'm pretending like player 1 is looking from this side and player 2 will be looking at it from this side this player board here shows us every little thing we can do with our turn but I'm just going to jump right in the first thing that you do on every turn is add a new tile to the board and then put two cubes on it but the location and how you put this down is really going to depend on the map cards that you have in front of you these are the runes that we're trying to excavate and these maps here kind of triangulate the locations of where we could find these temples for instance this one here we know is going to be below an island with a big forest on it it's going to be to the left of an island with a volcano and it's going to be above an island with a mountain well we look on the board and we see that there's two islands with mountains already and we just drew a tile that has a forest on it so perhaps you want the forest to be kind of high on the general map area so that we can have a forest up above and mountains below we also look at this map here and we see that it wants two mountains above and two forests to the left well we already have two mountains here but we don't have any for us yet so maybe we put this forest up and to the left in order to try and work towards these goals here so let's drop the tile right down here then we put one green resource there and I choose to put a grey resource on that island now we can start taking our three actions the first thing that I'll do is do a move action so this is our boat here and for one move you can follow as many sea lanes as you want and then end at a new dock and if your boat is empty you actually get two movements for the price of one unfortunately I only really want to go one movement so this boat will kind of sail around there and dock at this island our second action is going to be to load up these goods that are on the island we put them onto our boat when you load up you can get a maximum of three for our third action we want to consult the Oracle and that means I can state a color and start drawing tiles from the top of the deck until I get one with that resource icon on it now this makes sense because I'm one resource away from finding this temple already because I have a high green island here we've got a low gray island we just need to find a volcano so I will consult the Oracle and say I want to find a volcano so we start revealing tiles until we find one with a volcano and then we shuffle the rest back in so let's see here oh well I guess that was a waste of an action so I found one with the volcano but I really wanted it so I think it was worth it in the end the white player is going to place their tile down right here they're going to take a gray from the bank and then they're going to choose to take another gray from the bank and put it on this island here for the first action they're going to sail along this shipping route here and dock at this island they're going to do a load up action and they're going to get two gray cubes for that white decides not to control the Oracle so they spend their last action to sail back to Thera which is kind of the main island in this whole area now Thera is the only place where you can sell goods it's also the only place where you can buy more maps and you will never find a temple on Farah it might look like White's turns over but selling a good is a free action so White's going to go ahead and do that and sell these two gray cubes when you sell goods back to the market you get gold equal to whatever the number was when you put that cube down so that cubes worth for money and then this cube is going to be worth 3 so 7 total white gets there 7 money and now it's my turn because I have this excavation map here and I consulted the Oracle to find a volcano we're going to now find a temple so I'm going to put this down here and the reason I do that is because I now know that there's places on this island they're going to be below a green so maybe the spot here they are above a grey or a mountain the spot here still good and they're to the left of a volcano so I think I'm going to try and find a temple and one of these spots over here before I do that however I have to put a red down here and I think I'm going to go ahead and put a red resource on this island here now I have to be on an island in order to excavate it but there's another issue and that is that when you excavate an island it costs money to pay for the excavation so I'm going to need to spend 3 money in order to make this happen but I only start the game with 2 money so I'm going to need to go Thera and sell goods first so I'll spend one action to pick up sail back to Thera then I'll do a free action to sell both of these cubes this gets me three gold for that and two gold for that or five gold total now I can spend my next action to get back in that boat and head to the same Island I let's go to this port it was really no difference between them and for a third action I'm going to excavate a temple so I have this map I found the temple I've paid the money for the excavation and then I go ahead and take a temple off my player sheet and lo and behold boom there is a temple right there I now take this card I'm going to put it up right and it's now worth one victory point for me secondarily I just built a temple in a very large island and my endgame goal here this card is going to give you one point per tile associated with the largest island with a temple on it so this card right here is already worth one two three four points and it's probably going to get bigger and most importantly when I pull that temple off the spot it revealed a four so on my next turn I'm going to for actions to take I don't get that fourth one this turn but that's okay and I draw random tile for next turn why it's going to put their tile here and then they're going to put a blue resource on this island and another gray resource on that island the first thing that White's going to do is buy maps while the right therapy cuz this is the only island where you can purchase Maps we see that we have one victory point three venture point and seven victory point maps and we can choose whichever one we want we can buy one two or three Maps but that costs one three or seven money of respectively why does nine gold total and decides to spend three of that in order to buy two Maps they're going to grab a level one map and a level three map white just got a really happy look on their face and they spend one action to sail back to this island over here and then they say well I'm going to excavate two white reveals this map that they just bought we see that they're going to find a temple that's above a mountain island here that's to the right of a forest of the island here and that is below a volcanic island which is here white spends the three money in order to successfully excavate the temple and plop sit down right here now why it's done they draw a tile for their next turn and now it's my go I'm going to place this tile right over here because that lets me put two different resources on an island that my boat is already at so I'm going to put down a green and then I'll put a gray up here for my first action I'm going to load up three cubes for my second action I'm going to sail back to Thera I'm going to do a free selling action to the bank this gets me three gold plus two gold plus two or seven total I'm going to spend three gold to the bank in order to buy two Maps I think I'm going to take a 1 and a 3 as well unfortunately neither of these are particularly great at the moment because they both have blue that are off to the left and the only blue on the board is this one over here and yeah this can take a little bit working towards these but fortunately I almost have the other one when we look at this map that I already have we see that I'm going to be looking for a temple that's below 2 mountains and we have two mountains here but also to the right of two forests well we have two forests here that means we just need to find one blue icon in order to triangulate in on this second temple and so that means it'll probably be kind of down here I think it's worth it to consult the Oracle to say I want to find a tile with a blue icon on it aha well I think it's a good thing I consulted the Oracle that was going to be quite a while until a blue tile showed up now I'm going to shuffle these all back up again and for my final action let's see I know I'm going to be putting the tile which I just found from the Oracle here so there's no reason to vote anywhere and there's nothing to pick up so I think I'll spend this action and one money in order to draw a single new map just to kind of get ahead of the game I decided to take a level one map and it looks like this which oh my goodness I think we found it already we have a gray over there right over there and a blue well we're looking pretty good we're finding lots of temples but before I get to that it's White's turn white is going to place their tile right here they're going to put a grey there and a gray right there now they can spend their first action in order to load up these two gray goods white second action is going to be the move back to Thera and they're going to do a free sell action this gets white four plus three or seven gold while why does that Farah they're going to buy one more map for a single gold why does going big and they got a medium level map and for whites the last action they're going to move again but since they're empty they get two movements for the price of one I haven't shown yet by the way but you can move over an island from one dock to another so you don't always have to go sea lanes so white is going to go all the way to there and then and their turn now white kind of got in my hair because I was planning on putting my towel here but I think I'm still fine if I place it right there so then I'll put a blue resource here and then I think I'll choose to put another gray on this island here now the reason I'm placing so many Gray's by choice is simply that the market has them as the most expensive resource right now because so many of them came out and these have not been picked up yet for my first action I'm going to set sail all the way to this island here and my second action is going to be to excavate another ruin and we look here we see that this spot right here is going to be below to gray because we have the Grays up here it's going to be to the right of two green over there and we're still above this blue that we found so I dropped my new temple right here we see that this excavation is going to cost us $6 but it's going to give us three victory points so we pay our money and then we look at our player board and we see that when we drew this next temple we revealed an icon that said draw to keep one now these are the same end game victory point cards that we saw during setup so I get to look at two of these and keep one now if we look at the cards here we see that the one at the bottom is going to get us to picture points at the end of the game for each temple on an island with a mountain resource unfortunately I don't have any of those yet however both of these islands are kind of unfinished things can be added on to either side so it might be kind of easy to do that the second one here gives me three points for each temple that's on island that is one portage away from Thera here so that's like this white boat just went overland this is saying it wants temples that are one Overland chunk away from Thera I think I'm gonna go with this even though I don't have any yet just because both of these islands are unfinished and I think the next gray I grab is going to get thrown down on there for two points at this point I have two actions left and nothing amazing to do so I think I'll probably just do one action to load a single gray cube and then another action to set sail again and head over for this island which white is currently at the reason I'm doing this is because I hope to grab this cube and I'm hoping that white doesn't grab it instead I figure white probably won't since white is so far away they'll likely want to stay empty in order to get back into the thick of things with those two for one movements my turn is over I take a tile and now it's White's go so why it's going to place their tile up here they're going to take one red resource from the bank and then they drop a grain down there for White's first action they're going to do a move over to this island the second action is going to be to excavate they reveal this map here and they show that they are above a mountain right here they are to the left of a forest which is right here and then they are below a water which is up here so this spot right here is going to be where they place their temple this costs white three gold and gets them one point white also gets to look at two new endgame victory points and they're going to pick one of these whites third action is going to be to move and they get a two-for-one because they're empty so they go one two now you're never able to stop on a dock with an opponent but you can pass through so whites last action is going to be spend this to do another movement where they're going to kind of zoom around here and white decide if they're going to stop there they draw tile and now it's my turn I'm going to place my tile here which lets me put a green here and more importantly I can drop a gray there now I'll spend an action to load up these two gray cubes here I'll spend another action in order to sail back to Thera now I'll do a free action to sell these three cubes this gets me four plus three plus three or ten gold at this point I think I'm going to spend an action to sail back to the very same island I was at but I'm much richer now at this point I excavate I reveal this map to show that I am to the right of a mountain icon Here I am below a volcano and I am to the left of an ocean or blue icon I drop my shiny temple right here and I spend three gold to get one point and now I get five actions on my following turn I draw my tile and now it's White's turn white drops their tile down here they're going to grab a blue resource here and they decide to put a green resource there White's first action will be to move and it'll be a two for one because they're empty they're going to crawl over the land to this port right here and their second part of the move is going to take them all the way over to this island here the second action will be to excavate a temple and white reveals this card here they show that this location is to the left of a blue icon it's also underneath two grey icons and it's to the right of these two reds up here so right here will become White's third temple white pays the six bucks and then they get three victory points and now white is also going to have five actions on the following turn White's going to load up a green cube and then they're going to do a movement head back to this big island Oh over here white draws the tile and now it's my turn I'm going to place my towel right here that's going to get a red resource and I think I'll throw a blue resource on that Island there for my first action I'm going to move forward towards that island that I just created over here now I'm going to load up those two cubes into my boat next up I'm going to set sail again and this is going to be a long one even though it's only for one action my fourth action is going to be the sq8 a temple which I found on this island over here because it's to the left of this gray right here it's above a red now that I place this guy over here and it's definitely to the right of a blue this cost me $3 and I plunk my temple down right there because I dropped this temple I now get to choose from two more bonus cards I don't get more actions I look at both of these here and we see that this one's going to give me two points for every temple that's on an island with a forest and this one's going to give me two points for every island that is incomplete at the end of the game well I already have let's see one two islands that are on forests and let's see two of them are also incomplete so that's kind of hard to go with but at the end of the day one of them could be complete which would lose me points and they're not going to lose their forests so I'm going to go with this for my last action I think I'll just sail back to Thera I draw tile and now it's White's turn white is going to place their tile down here we're going to place a red on to this island and a grey on to that island why it's first action will be to pick up two cubes from this island right here next up they're going to do a movement which is going to take them over that's really Long Island to this port they're going to do another movement to get them off of this island and all the way back to Thera at this point white is going to sell all three of these cubes to the market which is going to get them three plus two plus three or a gold white is going to buy a single map for a money and white grabs a 1 value map and whites last action will be to do a two for one move then they draw tile and now it's my turn I'm going to place my tile right up here and then I'll place a blue resource and a another blue resource before I do anything I'm going to sell two goods this gets me three plus three or six money and my first action will be to buy two maps for three money I'm going to go ahead and buy a one value and then a seven value which is one of the now I'm pretty sure I could find a way to make this one value one work but the seven values gonna be tricky it gives a lot of points but let's see we need three different volcanoes kind of over there and unfortunately we have these two here but then they're down there we need to maybe we'll consult the Oracle to try and get a volcano over here to start getting options so I'll spend an action to consult the Oracle looking for a volcano let's see the first card is blue and second card up is a volcano cool it's starting to get kind of crowded on this map you may have noticed that you're never allowed to put a temple on an island that already has a temple of either color so we need to start going farther and farther out I know that I'm going to want to put temples on islands with grey and so I think next turn I'm going to hope to put this tile right here in order to kind of connect that up and excavate on that spot unfortunately that doesn't leave you with much to do this turn besides just get resources but so I think I'll spend one movement to go all the way up to here I'll spend another action in order to grab these two cubes here and then I'll spend my final action to come all the way back over to Sarah I don't think I'm going to sell these cubes yet because it doesn't look like white will be selling things back and when I place another tile I might be able to drop a cube that'll increase the value of one of these at this point I don't draw a new random card because I went to the Oracle so I know I have this one here white is going to place their tile over here and they're going to put a blue resource there and then they're going to put a grey resource on this island for White's first action they're going to move over to this island over here and for the second action they're going to excavate on this island white reveals this card right here which shows that it knows that there's a ruins that's above a green which is down here is to the left of grey and there are several of them over here and it's also below two volcanoes and they're quite a few up here as well so this is going to cost six gold for white and they get three points white puts their temple down here and now they get to draw two more endgame cards why it looks at both of these and then they pick one white is now going to pick up two cubes and then white is going to move twice towards Sarah with their boat laden with stuff white draws a tile now it's my turn for my turn I'm going to place the tile down right here that's going to put a red right there and then I think I'm going to put a blue on that island there before I do anything else I'm going to do a free action to the bank in order to sell these two cubes this is going to get me four plus three money or seven total I'm going to spend my first action as a double move because my boat is empty and then I'll do another move but this time just once in order to get over to this island down here my third action will be to excavate so I was able to satisfy this mega map that I found here because we need three mountains to the right-hand side and we have one two three I need to water that are above this location down here which is this one and this one and then I need to forest islands to be to the left and just barely we have those over there so this spot is going to work for me this cost me nine gold but gets me seven victory points and then I plunk my temple down right there and this means I'm going to have six actions to do on my next turn and I only have one more temple before I initiate the endgame I'm going to spend my fifth action to control the Oracle and say I really want a green forest tile because I get two points for putting a temples on those so let's start looking for a forest ah there we go and finally I have one more action but I really think I'm gonna try and put that last temple down here on to that forest tile so I think I'm just not going to use this action all right Dwight's turn why it's going to put this tile down here so I'm going to put one green up there and they're going to drop a blue on here what's first action will be to pick up this blue cube there and the second action will be to sail back to Thera for a free action white is going to sell these three cubes and why it's going to get three plus four plus three or ten gold what's third action will be to do a move and then white we'll do an excavation white can prove that there is a blue to the left because that's down here we've got a gray below the excavation site and then we've got a green just barely to the right of the excavation site this cost three gold and white gets one picture point white drops the temple down right here and now they get six actions on the next turn white the last action will be to consult the Oracle asking for a blue alright let's see there we go White's Gotham town so now it's my turn I'm going to place my tile right here that's going to get a gray resource and let's put a blue resource over there for my first out of six actions I'm going to do a move which is a two for one because I'm empty and then I'll do another move now I'm going to do an excavation I can prove that on this spot on the island there are two green to the right we got them right there we've got two volcanoes that are above it's right above and there is a blue to the left which is that guy over there this is going to cost six gold and I have exactly six gold and that'll get me three victory points and as you can see when I take this last temple and put it on the board I reveal this last turn spot and since I am the starting player that means that this is my last turn and white will get one more turn if white had done this on their turn revealing last turn then they would finish their turn and the game would be over as it is I have three extra actions so I figure I may as well pick up some cubes and then start making my way in two shots back to therapy cuz there's really no reason not to I couldn't really quite sell those off you get one point for every ten gold you get but it's just something to do with my last actions for whites last turn they're going to go ahead and place their tile over here they put a blue resource here and then they decide to put another blue resource there white also has six actions so the first one's going to be a two four one movement and this one is going to be a long one white is still not quite there so they do one more movement action and now white is going to excavate white reveals this map and they can show that their excavation site here is to the right of these two blue this site is also just barely below this gray over here and it's above these two volcanoes this cost six gold and gets white three points white puts their temple right down here and now they're in a pretty similar situation to where I was with three extra actions they could use one to load up a cube and then they can use two more to move even though it doesn't actually do anything for the endgame all right the game is over before I get into victory points take a quick look at this big ol board that we were able to put together let's cover my endgame cards first so first things first I get two points for every temple that's on an island with a green icon we see that I have one two three of these so this cars worth six points to me second is I get two points for each temple that's on an island with a mountain and unfortunately I wasn't able to pull that off once so this card is worth zero and this card gets me one point per tile in the largest island with a temple on it that I own so I get one two three four five six seven eight points for this card here you get one point for every ten gold you have at the end of the game but I have zero so when I add up these bonuses with all of the points I got to my excavations I have 30 points now let's look at White's endgame victory point cards this first one here gives white three points for every temple that's on island with zero resource icons on it white was able to do that twice we have one down here and the other one is up here on this island so this card is worth six points the next card has to do with putting a temple in the four quadrants of the overall sea area if you were to divide Thera into quarters so why was able to do that all four times because this guy down here takes care of this quarter this one just barely takes care of that quarter we got a couple over here and then this two down here get that so this card right here is worth eight points finally White's going to get five points each for every temple that is two Portage's away from Thera and it has to be the minimum route so by that I mean you have to be able to travel overland twice in order to get to Thera and you can't do that by sea routes and white was not able to do that even once even these guys over here were able to go to this island portage over and then have this long sea route back so they got close a couple times but was never able to get this one done so this card is worth zero points why end of the game with less than ten gold so they get zero points for that and when you add up their endgame victory point cards plus their excavation victory points they get 26 points total which means my 30 points for black wins the game now that we've seen a full game of Akrotiri I want to give you a couple initial impressions I have for the game now this is not a review I don't think I played the game enough times for one of those also I've never actually played against a real opponent just a couple games against myself so I'm looking forward to trying it a real person where I don't actually play their turns for them so my initial impression of the game is pretty positive I like how a lot of the stuff comes together first and foremost it's a Thailand game so you get this beautiful totally unique world that's getting built up as the game goes on but on top of that the placement of the temples is a fascinating mechanic thematically and mechanically of course you have these maps and you're kind of creating the world to fit your map but you can kind of set that aside in your mind from a thematic standpoint and really think that you are going out exploring and you're finding this spot on an island and you're like oh you know it's there's this over there and the two rivers they meet here I think we should start digging right there and boom we found a temple that's a very cool idea that it has to be here on this island not over here not over there right there is where you're gonna dig it where you're going to find it mechanically I think there are a lot of fascinating decisions to go along with what you're doing in the game you know where you put the tile down is very important based off the maps you have but also the cubes that you put down you're forced to put a cube of the color that's on the tile but then you get to choose the other cube and you look at that little board that has supply-and-demand and you look at your opponent and you think well do they have any cubes in their boat because I don't want to pull one of those cubes out because it's going to make that cube sell better or if they don't have any cubes in their boat well what's kind of close to them what light they'd be picking up so you can kind of dodge that also do I have anything in my boat that I want to buff up so even that one little decision there is a fascinating one that I really enjoy on top of that with this sprawling tiling map the shipping lanes are really neat the way you can go from one place all the way over to the other usually in one turn especially if you have no cubes on your boat is kind of a refreshing breath into tiling in general for tiling I'm kind of used to just adding tiles on and it kind of creates a pretty picture but you don't really move anything or you might move incredibly slowly but this one you're zipping all over the place you can I imagine catch your opponent completely off-guard by going from over here to over here and then digging up a temple on that island it you might have been about to dig up a temple on that island so it's definitely going to set things a little bit on edge and there's going to be a bit of a race feeling with the game because you place these six temples down where you excavate these six temples throughout the game but I found that you excavate almost every turn or at least every turn in the couple games that I've played now it's highly possible that I'm not playing strategically well that I kind of see how it's going but I'm not able to juggle what I really should be doing when I'm doing both players turns at the same time since the level one temples are only worth one victory point it's distinctly likely that you could probably win with four or even four four or five temples dug up if they are much higher value temples that are much more oriented towards those endgame cards that you have so I don't think racing to be the first one to drop six is necessarily going to be the winning strategy against a smart opponent but that's just kind of the way I played the game so far and last thing really is my only potential concern for the game and that is downtime there is a lot of analysis paralysis possibilities here especially late-game if you've decided to buy a whole bunch of maps like you have like five or six maps in front of you potentially well you are going to be thinking a lot about where you put this tile and you can be looking at the board and those icons of those icons so those icons and you're gonna be checking your cards back and forth now fortunately you get your tile at the end of your turn so you're gonna be thinking about all that stuff on your opponent's turn when they're gonna be doing their stuff but you know they might do something that completely derails your plan like placing a temple on an island that you wanted or placing your tile in a spot that you needed to put your tile so that might derail you and you need to go back to thinking about what's going on I definitely understand why this is a two-player game because in a 3 or 4 player game I could see it taking you very long time to get back to you also it'd be incredibly hard to strategize about what you want to do with the world changing that much to player makes a lot of sense for this game and I think that it's probably not going to be that big of a deal but it has the potential to be a problem depending on how you or your friends play the game play time for me has gone on I think around 40 minutes I would say would be an average kind of play length this one of course was about 25 minutes long but that's cuz I cut out all the little gaps and where I was actually thinking about what each player was going to be doing on their turns so overall I'm hopeful and I'm looking forward to playing this game against real people soon I hope you've enjoyed this video if you'd like to see more like it please consider subscribing to my youtube channel thanks for watching

Channel: JonGetsGames

Views: 14,882

Rating: 4.939394 out of 5

Keywords: Akrotiri, Board Game, JonGetsGames, Board Game Runthrough

Id: ZMtitg7nwoo

Length: 30min 13sec (1813 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 20 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/Floppymouth]

nice channel, I just subscribed. I really enjoy how-to board game videos.

[u/metagame]

Thanks for posting this! I've been really interested in Akrotiri so it's nice to see a playthrough.

[u/kevy_45]

Not too shabby. Subscribed.

[u/Rachaem]

Great job! I've been interested in this game. Subscribed!

[u/fallenposters]

Great play through! I've added this game to my wishlist. Keep it up!

[u/Bayakoo]

Looks beautiful, decently complex, 2 player, cheap. Seems I have to get it!

[u/Meadslosh]

WANT.

[u/dcm-moz]

This is fantastic! I just got Akrotiri yesterday and ended up learning the game with your video - easy!

[u/nakedmeeple]

Played it a couple times today - awesome game. It's really surprising how deep and nuanced the game gets, considering how small a package it comes in. The thing sprawls outside the confines of that box, and really turns into this meaty and challenging experience.

At some point you start thinking "Well, there are icons everywhere. I can match just about any pattern now..." and while that might be true, it's often tough at that stage to find a place to excavate a temple. Really nice balance.