Lost Explorers Review - with Zee Garcia

hey hey everybody z garcia here and today we're going to be sending out expedition leaders and trying to follow clues to a lost world in lost explorers in this game you're going to be deploying your little explorers here your little meeples sending them out to collect tiles for you that you can use either as transportation on the one side or as a mission on the other side and then going to those places and cashing in those missions moving up on these tracks trying to get four clues before anybody else if you're the first one to do that you're going to win the game so let's go ahead and take a look at how the game works you play right out of this box here by opening this up and then you've got the board right here and some tokens that are used over on this side but before i get too far ahead of myself let me show you how it works what it looks like i'll see you on the other side so here we've got the game set up for three players we are going to give each player three of these little explorers you got four tokens you begin with from a a starting pool and you are going to keep three of them on the vehicle side and flip one of them face over okay so orange player white player purple player over there and then there's one extra one that you leave aside one of these characters one of your little explorers we are also going to add a number of locations that are already check marked to the board depending on the number of players so for uh three players we are going to add three of them so we randomly pull from this little stack of four this one came up so we will leave it flip it over and leave it as a check mark there this one came up and then we'll pick one more from the two left over here and it is over here so we will also mark that one i'm sorry over here that one will also be marked off as always you you always count as having uh influence if you will in that location so what are you trying to do in the game you are trying to race the other players to get four of these um spyglass tokens okay these clue tokens and you are going to do that by completing expeditions as required on these tokens having influence having a character in each of these three for example and then cashing that in letting you move up on the orange track these tracks as you can see share two colors uh a red and yellow i guess it is and then a green and blue over here so this would be a red one it would move me up on this track right here you have your three characters on your turn to take actions but the game does ramp up at the beginning so the very first player is only going to get to use one the second player gets to use two and then three after that or if you get the fourth four after that for the rest of the game i'm not going to worry about the ramping up i'm just going to show you we're going to pretend the game somewhere in the middle okay just for the sake of the example here so what do you get to do on your turn we have to send these people out to either this location here and get one of these tokens you can go to this one and get one of these tokens or you can go out onto the map onto the board by having the correct uh transportation tokens in front of you okay so these two are the same if i send a single character there i can take the first token here when i take it i can leave it in front of me as that transportation type a ship or i can flip it over and put it in front of me as a contract something i'm trying to fulfill and i don't get to peek before i choose to flip it over or not okay so that's the first thing i can go over here and do the same thing if you go with more than one character to one then you'll get the second tile in or the third tile in respectively once you've been to one you can go there again so i cannot go one take the first one and then go again in the same turn and take the first one again you go there one time the other option like i said is going out here we are all starting from this spot and using the different legs to get to these locations but you are not really going to have to worry about these barely visible lines on the board each location just tells you the kinds of transportation types it needs okay so i'm looking at my tile here this bottom one is taken care of because it's already checked off so i need the other ones i need to send one of my people here and i need to send one of my people to where is it finding it this one okay so this needs red and blue this needs red and green okay well my first action is going to be to send two people here and get the second tile in it's red i'm going to go ahead and grab that one i'm going to put it in front of me as a train that's transportation and now i'm going to use this last character to go somewhere on the board and start preparing myself if i go to this one it'll be red and blue like i said so i can drop the character off i'm using these two and i have to get rid of one of them so i'm going to let go of the blue one so that's out whoop that's out of the game and i keep the rest of these that's the end of my turn i clear any of the characters up here back into my pool okay and it'll be the next players go and they'll do a you know some of uh what i just did there if any player bumps you out of a location because only one player can be in one of these you'll take it back but then the token for movement that they would normally discard they give to you okay so let's say comes back around and i'm going to send one of my characters here by the way when you begin a new round if you want to you can evacuate these locations willingly if you need the character for something so i'm going to send one here where i need it it says red and green i've got that i'm going to get rid of one of them and then i'll use this last one to go here and take a token let's say during fa that so that's all counts as phase one and then phase two is basically cashing in these expeditions i have everything i need for this one one person here one person here and this one accounted for so i am going to score it and i'm going to get a number of ticks up on the matching track equal to the number of characters that are participating this one here doesn't count as a character so i've got two i'm going to take my token and move it up twice and then this is done i can get rid of that and just like i do when i use movement i have to lose one of these people so i'll pull back this one let's say this is gone this one can stay out there if i had multiple uh of the expeditions face up in front of me then i could be a little more strategic about which one i leave behind and which one i pull back right so if i you know perhaps i'd need this for another one i've got in front of me and i'm working on so that's how you make that decision and then it's the next players go once both of your characters make it up to the fourth step over here you earn your last character and you can now start deploying that one once either one of these makes it up to 5 to 9 12 or 14 up here you are going to earn one of these tokens and when you are the first player to get four of them you win the game you'll take all four of them you are going to reveal them they have a number on the back you are going to find the uh sum of the numbers and then you are going to go to the back of the rulebook which has a bunch of these qr codes you are going to scan the qr code that matches the total and it will take you to google maps or something and it just shows you somewhere in the world uh the last game i played it was the galapagos islands and it doesn't do anything it just tells you this is where the secret entrance to the underworld or something like that uh to some hidden place is but again it doesn't really do anything it just sort of triggers your google maps to go somewhere they programmed it to go so that's the game that's how it works you are collecting these uh and uh making sure you have the right tokens to deploy your people cashing in those uh people to complete the missions and racing up these tracks to get four of these before anybody else all right as these run out uh well one thing they'll start sliding down as they run out so you'll start having a problem where like if you can't see deep enough into the box you'll start thinking this is the first one but it's not there's another one that's slid down and they sort of settle because there's no grip on the bottom uh but if it runs out completely and when i play this we use this this spot here about to for about like the first say eight or so of these tokens and after that we just have to pull them out because you can't see and they start settling in there but once one of them is out you just don't deploy there anymore but the game's almost over at that point so there you go that is lost explorers let's go ahead and go back up top let me tell you what i think of it unfortunately this is not a game i am a fan of i think there are just too many problems with both the game play of the game and the the usability of the whole package okay so let me go ahead and break it down we're going to go from the top theme reads very well but it is so high level it is so removed that it gets very quickly and easily lost in the play of it the idea is as i said two exp breaking news two explorers have announced today the discovery of a lost world they explain that they have hidden clues leading to a secret entrance this is a new challenge for you driven only by your courage you just have to follow in their footsteps and launch a worldwide expedition but beware you're not the only one on this quest that reads very well sounds very exciting but the actions you're taking in the game are so far removed it becomes faceless and then just gets lost so don't love the themes the sort of thematic tie-ins don't work for me though i like the thing uh the aesthetics are really problematic there's so much brown on everything the board is quite small the symbols upon that board smaller still it'll be somewhere in the middle of a table everyone's going to have a hard time kind of seeing where things are if you're sort of spaced out at all the box is quite problematic not it's a neat idea that didn't pan out and doesn't really work it becomes quite quickly a hindrance more than a benefit you can start playing a little bit faster yes and then things go badly those tokens start to settle to the bottom of their channels there's no grip along the bottom it's just cardboard so they quickly settle um it's it's visually and from a usability point of view this is quite bad the replay value is also not great it's very samey very obvious the play is tedious and scripted i did not enjoy the uh i don't think this has the play didn't really work for me and i find the replay ability to really not change it up you will discover very little as you play this game from one game to the other one the game arc is okay uh very quick turns game length is tight the game does not outstay its welcome as far as you know mechanically tying mechanics and mechanisms to the play length okay might outstate welcome just because you don't like it at all but it is not a game that feels overly long for what you're doing in it is what i'm saying ease of play also a problem it's visually unpleasant uh it's easy easy to understand but the game is very visually unpleasant and all the the symbols for the locations around the world are the same shade of dark brown it's a tiny little piece that up close you can see oh that's a mask or that's a nazca lines or whatever but when it's across a table it's just a little brown blob and you're not sure what you should be doing um the box design as i said really hurts the replay the the playability and the ease of play as well so all of that lastly tactics look strategy again it's quite obvious it's somewhere in the middle though the um it's not terrible i think the game isn't brain dead uh you will make a couple of choices i need more transportation in blue i'll take that one and then oh i better have multiple missions and face up in front of me so i need another one so that when i complete one i can quickly move on to the next mission that's a thing right but generally the play is pretty obvious and the whole qr thing on the back of the rulebook is almost like a final insult after you're done playing the game because they they tell you collect all these things and then flip them over and add the numbers together and then scan the corresponding qr code and you're thinking this is cool suddenly like there's a nearly really neat strange new thing here at the end where they're telling me to go somewhere and scan a qr code and then what it does is it just loads some place on google maps or something um and they're not even is sort of anachronistic too because one of them was as i told you uh galapagos islands one of the islands of the galapagos and then the other one one of the other ones i saw was like the offices of the company in france so like a building in france and i'm thinking wait isn't this isn't that the wrong time period i thought this you know okay an island somewhere sure is the gate to a world below our feet but that's dumb and it's not it's not as funny as maybe they think it is um it hurts the theme yet again it feels like oh maybe there's a more interesting game if this whole qr thing was implemented into the game and not just a at the end so i i thought that was just underwhelming after playing the whole thing you're the one who makes the map with the clues and it takes you to a joke um so yeah overall this is not a great game it is not one i recommend i think it is the best thing about this game is this cover i think it's a beautiful cover but nothing in the game is engaging and i'm not sure who it's for it's light and quick enough where kids would play it and they could play but it's so dull looking i don't think they're going to want to it is weight wise kind of a ticket to ride style game but it doesn't have the tactics and interest of that the tension really isn't there for that um the brightness and attractiveness to catch non-gamers and bring them to the table isn't there so i'm not sure who this is for and it's not strategic enough or thinky enough in any way where games that normally look like this and appeal to folks that like to dive into a game are going to find any you know redeeming qualities in it so those folks i don't think are going to enjoy this one either so for me the game just has too many missteps unfortunately uh it needs a little more interest and it needs a better box for sure this idea of using the box to play didn't work out so this is going to get a 4 out of 10 from me uh that's a thumbs down this is not one i recommend you pick up at all there's lots of good lightweight games out there lots of good exploration games and um i just again there's a better game and any any one branch i can think this might fit in there's better games out there for it so that's it for me everybody my name is z garcia i'll see you on the next one so [Music] you

Channel: The Dice Tower

Views: 8,718

Rating: 4.9709091 out of 5

Keywords: board game, board, game, dice, card game, cards, catan, monopoly, tower, dice tower, vasel, review, tom vasel, vassel, settlers, gaming, board game review, boardgame, uno, ticket to ride, apples to apples, educational games, educational, top 10, juegosdemesa, Brettspiele, ボードゲーム, brädspel, jeuxdesociété, משחקילוח, 보드게임, deskováhra, graplanszowa, bordspel, 棋盘游戏, gioco da tavolo, desková hra, gra planszowa, настольная игра, trò chơi trên bàn cờ, jogo de tabuleiro, لعبة اللوحة, GeekUsername: ZeeGarcia

Id: lqqE2ISfibE

Length: 16min 58sec (1018 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021