Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
At the beginning of Explorers, you and each other explorer place four landscape tiles — grasslands, bodies of water, desert or mountains — and three different scoring tiles in your game frame. Then from your starting village, you go on an exploratory tour.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Line Drawing
Draw lines to connect, divide, trace, or claim parts of the play area.
Pick Up and Deliver
Collect goods at one location and transport them to another for rewards.
Modular Board
Build the play area from interchangeable sections that vary between games.
Paper-and-Pencil
Record choices and results directly on a personal sheet.
End Game Bonuses
Earn additional points for meeting conditions evaluated when the game ends.
Read the full game description
At the beginning of Explorers, you and each other explorer place four landscape tiles — grasslands, bodies of water, desert or mountains — and three different scoring tiles in your game frame. Then from your starting village, you go on an exploratory tour. The exploration cards, each of which shows two landscapes, indicates which landscapes you are allowed to cross (off). On your turn, you reveal an exploration card, chooses one of the two types of terrain, then cross off three spaces ahead of your current location. Your fellow players must then decide whether to place only two crosses on the same landscape, or choose the other landscape and tick off three crosses. All of your crosses must be orthogonally adjacent, so you need to plan well to avoid being stuck due to "bad" landscape choices. Over four rounds, you expand your territory, receiving a special action for each checked box with an object in it. You receive points for provisions and gems, with a map you can place crosses on any type of terrain, and lost temples can be explored with keys — but whoever reaches the temple first receives the most points for it... Explorers contains a solo version as well as additional task tiles for experienced players, with more than a million possible game combinations.