So with the newest Jurassic World movie out I found myself packing a few dinosaur boxes for games night this week, but was surprised to find I was the only person to bring any. If you find yourself looking over your own gaming shelves now and just feel like you don’t have enough, well then this list is for you! I’ve browsed through all the best dinosaur games available to let you know which ones you can pick up right now!
10. Monopoly: Dinosaurs
Well, this might make modern board gamers shudder at the thought, but for casual families or those who just enjoy this classic we present you one of the newest themed editions that’s just perfect for the job! Now, in complete honesty I haven’t played this version, I’ve only looked it up online, but everything I find points to it being identical in gameplay to the regular versions, so there’s nothing really ground-breakingly new or different here … except it comes with a few shiny dinosaur movers, much better than a battered old boot!
9. Jurassic Park – Danger!
If this list was inspired by the Jurassic World film, then what else deserves a place more than the game licensed off the original film! This asymmetric game pits one player against the rest, the solo player gets to control the three dinosaurs on the map, no need to explain why they are Velociraptor, Dilophosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex. Everyone else will be teaming up as the gang of humans, with a wide selection of options based off all the characters from the film. They’re looking to outmanoeuvre the reptiles in order to reach certain landmarks and get safely off the island. They can do this by playing from their hand of cards, but each time the dinosaurs catch a human they lose one of these precious things, and once all gone are left to a fate only seen in the movies. So run as fast as you can!
8. Smash Up
Now, this game isn’t completely about dinosaurs, but they can be a prominent feature (about 12.5% of it to be exact, or 100% if I’m playing it). Smash Up features 8 different factions to start with, each utilising their own unique deck. Every player will use two of these factions in combination, shuffled together to give a personalised play deck for the game. Maybe you’ll have Pirate Dinosaurs, or Dinosaur Ninjas, or Dinosaur Zombies, or just not pick any dinosaurs, in which case why even pick up the game?!? So anyway, gameplay resolves around choosing one of your cards to play each turn to send one of your faction members to different bases on the map, every card has a power value and once a base has reached a minimum amount of power inside it pops open and scores points based o who sent what. The different factions combo their cards in different ways, but I found that in general dinosaurs just have the highest base, so again why wouldn’t you pick them!!
7. Happy Little Dinosaurs
Awww, these guys are all happy, look at all the cute dinosaur meeples you can use, isn’t that nice of the game to give you them. And now there’s several meteors headed straight for them, wait, that’s not so happy. And now there’s disasters, predatory disasters, natural disasters, even emotional disasters like wetting pants in public, what’s going on! Right, time to keep the guys happy, over the game you’ll compete with your rivals to avoid being the poor guy who gets these disasters forced upon them. Choose to play a points card each turn and not be the lowest, but be aware of events and powers out there, some cards may swap numbers, or buff points. Try to be the first dinosaur to get to 50 points while avoiding collecting too many of the same type of disaster, or even completing a set of one of each, because otherwise disaster strikes and you can expect that to be game over!
6. Funko Games: Jurassic World: The Legacy Of Isla Nublar
This game was originally crowdfunding (like a few more upcoming on the list) before being released to the mass market by Funko games, being one of the many legacy games that have cropped up over the last few years. Rather than just playing the same Jurassic Park game repeatedly and expecting different outcomes each time from the gameplay, you’ll get a legacy game where each time you finish there’ll be some permanent changes made to the game, unlock some cards, put down some stickers, and maybe or maybe not you may rip up a card or two… If you’re already a fan of legacy games this is nothing new and you’ll know how tricky it is not to give spoilers, so the basics to know is the game comes with several sealed envelopes for each time you play, the artwork is fantastic, and there’s a hoard of mini dinosaur boxes to unlock more as you plat to join the original 4, the games being maybe linked to the films in some way so who knows what creatures you may find in the herbivore, carnivore or the special purple boxes. By the time you’ve finished playing through the game you’ll have your own unique copy, with the location of the [REDACTED] facility, the [REDACTED] spawning points. Your park being overrun by [REDACTED] dinosaurs meaning you need to get your [REDACTED] unhooked from the holster to take them down. Well, something like that anyway. [Edit. So this was available at the time of research for the blog, on a final check it appears to be currently out of stock]
5. Cretaceous Rails
This is still on pre-order mode, but being an original crowdfunded game I have my copy already so have been able to test it out. The theme is that time travel has been invented so rather than create ridiculous paradoxes or problems instead we’ve all gone back in time to meet the dinosaurs, where you’ll find us taking over several rival tour franchises, clearing away jungle and setting up train lines deep into the wilds past volcanos and encountering many dinosaurs along the way. We’ll give some Safari tours of these guys to the many tourists dotted around, while also capturing a few to bring back for our own personal resorts. I enjoy the interaction with the action selections each round, where you can’t immediately get locked out of your choices for the round but also with 4 players it becomes very competitive to get the space you want, especially as it changes every round and so might throw up so good combinations one turn that weren’t present the time before. It also comes with a solo mode, and rather than use the standard of dinosaur meeples it comes with big dinosaur miniatures which really gives it a big table presence to look at, even if it becomes a bit fiddly!
4. Fossilis
Yet another game that was launched off the back of crowdfunding (this has done wonders for the dinosaur game industry), this one has a similar impressive table presence. but actually requires most of this to create part of the core gameplay concept. The board is a giant excavation site, covered with pits that you can fit all the various dinosaur bones into that you’ll be looking for during the game. The different colours of thick chunky tiles represent different difficulty of digging through layers of ground. You need to move them around, push them off the board and just dig through, eventually reaching the bones to pull them out, you can actually create a nice pile physically on the table in front of you, until you trade them in for dinosaur cards and those wonderful end game points. The rest of the fun in this game comes from the ability to block and scupper and generally mess with your opponents, sometimes merely by accident, but also there’s nothing better than seeing a rival archaeologist standing a bit too close to the edge, and sliding the tiles to send them careening off of it while giggling with glee (I’m fairly certain this is an actual rule, and not just something we house-ruled to spite each other haha)
3. Dinosaur Island
Now we’re entering the top three, and it kicks off with Dinosaur Island. Another game who began it’s path on the crowdfunding ladder, coming out in late 2010s, although some slight controversy when the game DinoGenics came up around the same time. They both offer plenty of similarities, although the main factor here is that other game is not available, yet you can pick up Dinosaur Island today! The game features a main board stacked full of things player’s need to improve their parks, more dinosaur enclosures, more employees, more facilities, and while there’s plenty of them you actually end up playing a worker placement game to get it. So during the round if you want something you better go grab it when you can as it might not be there when you go back again! It also has some cool custom dice that you’ll roll each round to generate resources, which generally speaking will be different strands of DNA where you’re aiming to collect certain ones in certain quantities to establish dinosaurs in the park to attract customers to come visit to pay you money and use this to repeat the process! I’ve found the game to be fairly balanced in playing out, although there is some randomness in the dice rolling, or even in the hooligans hiding in the customer bag, who when drawn sneak into you park instead and deny you any cash, possibly even filling up spots so paying customers can’t get in. If you’ve ever seen or played the game then you’ll instantly recognise all of the pink plastic dinosaur meeples that come in the box!
2. Tiny Epic Dinosaurs
The tiny Epic series comes with some great ‘small box big play’ games, this one being no exception. You could probably tip out the same amount of contents from this box as you can from Dinosaur Island, it’s just all smaller, including a whole load of mini dinosaur meeples! This game is another worker placement game involving the players competing for the best action spots available in order to develop their personal parks, but you’ll find this gets simplified down a bit as all you really want to do is build fences and fill the park with a good mix of dinosaurs, and feed them of course, plus hopefully do a bit of research around and manage to get some of the special ones on your board to make your park stand out from the rest. As with the rest of the Tiny Epic games, the smaller sized box makes it easy to fit into bags to carry around anywhere, with the gameplay fitting into a shorter time frame than some meaning you can get often get a game in when you wouldn’t be able to fit in a longer one. Another plus for the game is that it can come with an easy to include expansion that feels natural to play, opens up a couple more gameplay options, and also still fits in the base game box without any (extra) struggle for room.
H. Apex Collected Edition
The honourable mention of the list before we get to the king of the lizard games, and it goes to a game about being the king of the apex species. This is a very highly ranked game of mine, but due to being unavailable it couldn’t make it onto the list. The original game went out of print and I picked this up by getting my hands on the Collected Edition reprint (from a crowdfunding campaign surprise, surprise) which has a bus load of contents to play through, all the original game plus the extra expansions all in one box, there’s a lot of cards in here. It’s a new spin on deck building where you need to manage your deck which represents your apex species, while using resources to hatch more dinosaurs from your egg deck and then try and get them into your brood, or spend the evolution points instead on genetic enhancements to make your guys stronger, either way hopefully leading to you taking down larger and more numerous prey and earning more points. The goal is to improve and build up your dinosaurs enough that when the game reaches its conclusion of natural disasters you’ll be a gang big and mean enough to take out your personal rival Apex Theropod and claim dominance of the land. A fantastic game and a great solo game tool
1. Draftosaurus Marina / Aerial Show
Finally we get to a game that wasn’t actually crowdfunded, Draftosaurus. The base game here is one of my most played games of all times! The dinosaur theme was what first sold it to me, the box of dinosaur meeples and was calling my name. But the gameplay is what’s kept me coming back. It’s a simple drafting game really, in about 5 minutes you can easily teach how to play and all the different scoring areas available on the player boards. Then it only takes about 10 minutes before you’re all finished drafting and scoring up. So what could make this experience better? Well expansions of course! These aren’t a necessity, but they add plenty more options and interesting gameplay decisions. Both will add the same extras, a board extension and a new dinosaur type to play with. Either choose the Marina to add the harbour to the parks, filling it with Plesiosaurs, then using the other species of dinosaurs to unlock gates and push them further out for more end game points, or opt for the Aerial Show expansion, in which case you’ll be getting Pterodactyls to add in, filling up thr nests in your new avaries for extra bonuses. So I guess you can just pick whichever one of these tickle your fancy. Or you know what, just use both at the same time for the ultimate drafting experience! (I’ve even gone as far as to purchase extra stickers online to fully pimp out my meeples!)
