Skara Brae

Skara Brae is a one-to-four-player strategy game about the resilient community that lived on Scotland’s Orkney Islands roughly five thousand years ago. Across four rounds, players draft village cards and place workers to gather the food, materials, furnishings, and shelter their growing settlement requires. Actions can chain into one another, so an efficient turn may transform raw resources, furnish a room, improve trade, and prepare the next worker before an opponent can claim the same opportunity. Each player receives asymmetric action tiles that reshape the puzzle and encourage a distinct route through cooking, crafting, hunting, cleaning, and commerce. Growth carries its own burden: settlers must be provided for at the end of every round, and productive households generate midden that consumes space and effort until it is cleared. Village, roof, task, and spindle-whorl cards create goals beyond simple accumulation, while the passing turn-order system rewards knowing when to stop. The result is a brisk historical eurogame with a natural arc from survival to prosperity. Skara Brae makes waste management, resource chains, and the rhythm of a four-round settlement feel inseparable from the place that inspired it.