In Primates, designed by Derek Coons and published by Green Butterfly Games, your mission is to climb the evolutionary ladder, discovering extinct and non-extinct (‘extant’ in the terminology of the game) primates. Green Butterfly’s blurb reads: ‘Primates is an evolutionary board game where you can explore the evolution of more than 100 different primate species! This educational game is great for families as well as students of evolutionary biology, ecology, botany, and primatology.’
According to the box, the game is suitable for 2–4 players, aged 14+, with an estimated playing time of 45–90 minutes. However, BoardGameGeek members’ consensus is 10+, and they reckon the best number of players is three.
In the box, you’ll find a colourful board portraying a simplified primate phylogenetic tree; heaps of extinct and extant species cards, as well as ability, bonus and environment cards; four player mats and associated sets of cute and chunky wooden player tokens; three dice; and food tokens in four different colours: green (representing leaves and algae), orange (fruit, seeds and nuts), brown (insects and meat), yellow (nectar, sap, honeydew, and the like—‘exudate’ food in game terminology). There’s also a rule book, but more on that later.
How to Play
The board is laid out with extant primate and ability cards above the phylogenetic tree, bonus cards to one side and extinct species cards to the other. The game starts with each player’s collection of three primate tokens sitting at the base of the tree and ‘extinct primate tokens’ on the spots indicated by the revealed species cards.
During each round, you first either move or ‘rest.’ For moving, you have two options: roll the three dice and assign each primate token one of the results, moving it that number of steps up the tree (always up—you can’t use the dice to move down); or roll two dice and move a single primate that number of steps. The explanation for the two movement styles is that they reflect the different travel strategies of wild primates: ‘Some primates, such as mandrills, frequently travel together in large groups. Others, such as male orangutans are mostly solitary and travel alone.’ If your movement takes you right to the top of the tree, you grab one of the extant primate cards along with the ability cards marked on it, then return your primate token to the bottom to start the climb again. The ability cards give you a range of different, well, abilities, such as additional movement options or letting you convert one food type to another. Resting means leaving the player tokens where they are, instead taking a bonus card from one of the piles on the left of the board; bonus cards confer scoring points or immediate benefits such as extra food or movement.
After this, the player draws an environment card from the centre of the board and acts on it. These cards typically cause food to be placed at certain spaces in the tree, but a few refresh the bonus cards. If, during the movement phase, you land on a space containing food tokens, you may take them. If you are on a space with an extinct primate token, and you have all the food necessary to acquire that animal card, you can trade the food for the card. These extinct primate cards provide a large contribution to the final score.
Play then switches to the next player. The game ends after a player count determined number of rounds, and final scores are totted up from points on acquired primate cards, bonus cards and leftover food. There’s also a ‘heart track’ which can provide large score increments—you move along this track by drawing bonus or ability cards with that as a benefit.
Given that the environment cards affect what happens next, I’m slightly irked that they’re drawn at the end of a turn, meaning that the final action of the game is to place food on the board or change the bonus cards, which no one can take advantage of. I tend to play with the order swapped, such that the first action is to draw the environment card; I don’t think it affects play hugely, apart from leaving me less annoyed on the final move.
If you fancy a longer game, the publisher’s instructions for extending play can be found via https://greenbutterflygames.com/pages/how-to-play along with an FAQ clarifying some rules. Three more rounds are added, along with rules for using extra cards and discarding food to keep the game flowing.
Overall Impressions
While there are a good few games based on evolution, I’ve not come across one quite like this before. The game’s developers are clearly passionate about science and evolution— and, of course, primates. I like how aspects of the game correspond to primate behaviour: beyond the justification for the different movement styles mentioned earlier, animals are associated with the types of food they eat, and extinct species are associated with the appropriate location in the phylogenetic tree. The one aspect that doesn’t work for me is the heart track: according to the rules, it ‘represents your primates’ social bonds, health, welfare, and social status.’ I’m not quite sure how that makes sense…
There’s a lot of educational potential in this game. You can certainly ignore all that and play the pretty tokens and cards, but just take a look at the back of the board (above) to see the scientific basis of the tree on the front, or read the descriptions on the cards (which is the easier of the two when you’re actually playing). Page 10 of the rules booklet provides suggestions for use of the game in the classroom and explains what the different letters and numbers on the board spaces mean – the different taxonomic classifications and geological periods, respectively. As well as that, the guide contains four whole pages of scientific references for the inquisitive.
The rules part of the book is nicely laid out and clearly explained and illustrated. Overall, the production quality of this game is high, though the card artwork ranges from gorgeous to so-so. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the art in games like Wingspan and Biomes of Nilgiris! Now that I’ve brought up those two games, while they’re quite different to this game, playing Primates gives similar vibes, though it’s a little simpler to play—if you like that sort of game, Primates might be a nice addition to your collection.
One thing that feels like an omission these days is a solo mode, but I’m sure someone on BoardGameGeek will devise some sort of automa for the game. Until then, you’re stuck with playing multiple hands against yourself.
A potential criticism is the ‘roll and move’ mechanism — as the BGG page says, ‘This term is often used derogatorily to imply that there is no thought involved.’ While that may be the case where there are limited move options, with Primates having three separate primate tokens climbing branching paths, a reasonable amount of strategic thinking is involved. A deluxe version exists, but the apart from thirty or so additional cards (which include a plethora of interesting abilities and bonuses) in the bundled mini-expansions, there’s not a lot beyond what you find in the already plush standard version: a couple of nicely presented player aid cards (which are of limited value, since game play is fairly straightforward), a fabric components bag and a metal first player token (woo!). Fortunately, the price difference between the versions is only of the order of a tenner, which is possibly worth it just for the extra cards—currently, the mini-expansions don’t seem to be available for purchase separately, only as part of the deluxe version.
Conclusion
This colourful game is both fun and educational, and easy to pick up and run with. Playing time is fairly short (though if you stop and read every card—which I’d recommend—it could stretch a bit) and the interactions between players (racing to get food before someone else, or using various actions to move another player’s token) are sufficiently chill as not to result in major arguments. The game comes with so many cards that you won’t see more than a fraction in one session, which gives the game a fair amount of replayability, and the expansions increase the number of cards still further.
Finally, if you want to find out much more about the game, its Kickstarter page could be worth a visit.
About the author:
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
