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A group of archeologists just made the headlines. After decoding an ancient Mayan manuscript, they found the location of a secret temple in the jungles of El Salvador. The document revealed the existence of an unknown secret city, that can only be seen from the top of a large, circular temple.
The secret passage to reach the temple is a set of very large stone slabs sitting on stone rolls. These sit above an ancient river, believed to be a passage from the living world to the Underworld…
Slide stone slabs and race to create a path to discover stelae (monuments) and perhaps even ascend the temple to view the ancient city. But beware of the boulders that will be triggered along the way. They may trap you forever if you don’t move quickly!
—description from the publisher
- Very cool, very fun, very tactile.
- Enjoyed the puzzle aspect and minmaxing moves.
- Neat boulder dynamics.
- Aesthetically nice look and feel (prototype).
- Might suffer with teams wanting to push other players or get impatient.
- Not a deep Euro game with tactical or strategic depth.
- Clank
- Relics of Aja Jiara
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Action Point Allowance — Players have three actions per turn to move pieces.
- Bag building / tile drawing — Players draw three tiles from a bag at the start of their turn.
- Hidden Information — Collected tokens with point values are hidden information.
- Modular Board — The game features a modular baseboard that is built out piece by piece with rows of tiles that are slid into place.
- Movement Allowance — Players have three moves per turn and can move one piece three times, or split up their moves among pieces, restricted to moving onto rows they are going to go onto.
- Push Your Luck — Players must decide how far to push their luck to collect points, balancing the risk of boulders moving down the board and potentially causing them to lose all their points if they don't exit.
- Set Collection — Players collect tokens along the way that have point values, and the goal is to reach the top for a large point bonus.
- Tile Placement — Players place rows of tiles as they build out the board.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this is the board in all of its Grandeur and as I was saying it is big
- it's just very cool very fun very tactile
- this is also the exit if all three Boulders get down if you have not gotten back home and out effectively you lose you score zero points
- I really enjoyed the puzzle aspect at the end of the day you're going to be looking at a bunch of icons and deciding where you're going to shift them in mood and sort of move them and P and pattern match and sort of work through and try to minmax your moves
- it feels like a game that maybe was solo first and then a team game
- aesthetically it's got a really nice look and feel to it
- I think this continues to build on those Good Vibes