Sounds like the kind of thing you’d say if you were sick to death of dinos stomping around your garden, leaving big ruddy footprints in your azalea patch. ‘Flippin’ Dinosaurs! Stay in your own street!’ Er, anyway…
The end of an era is nigh. The comet is in the sky and heading for the dinosaur kingdom! (Note for humankind: the dinos got taken out of the game of life in one fell swoop, and they weren’t messing up their environment. Just sayin’.) Play as the carnivores or the herbivores in this two-player tile flipping board game! Search the pre-historic land for your teams' dinosaurs and rescue them before the comet crashes down to earth!
How do we play, then?
Couldn't be simpler my friends: you'll be up and running in minutes. Players draw and place 16 tiles from the top of the deck and place them face down in a square grid. Choose your team, the carnivores or herbivores! Players then take it turns to move their Dino meeples onto the board, flipping over face down cards when they land on them. Once a card is flipped it remains face up until all three of your Dino Meeples are on cards matching your colour/team - but watch out for cards with special conditions, such as the volcano, the tar pits, and the dino eggs. When all three of your Dino Meeples are on cards that match their colour, you score points by removing the matching colour cards they were on top of. Keep your scored cards to one side, you need these to win, but also you may spend points earned to remove your opponents meeples from the board. The goal of the game is to score the most points, but watch out for volcanoes, tar pits and other special cards along the way that will hinder your mission to rescue your team’s dinos!
When the comet card appears… BOOM! Game over! Tot up your points, and lament the loss of a wonderful age…
I’ve had the pleasure of testing the game out, and I’m a bit of a fan. A deck of card tiles and a few dino meeples doesn’t look like much, but it works. Also, it’s the kind of game that slips easily into your luggage for a bit of holiday entertainment on your balcony. It will certainly suit the younger dino fans in your life, but the tile turning is unpredictable enough that us older ones can have fun too.
Flippin’ Dinosaurs has already met its modest target easily, and the team are ready to ship, so this isn’t one of those risky Kickstarters where you could be waiting months for updates. Head here to back it, get it, love it.
Honestly, this game is roarsome (please tell me nobody’s used that yet).
About the author:
Steve is currently a freelance board game blogger, but often dreams of life as a pirate, or as a ghost herder in the Lake District, or as an evil estate agent who sells haunted houses for his own dark pleasure. Instead of figuring out how to do these jobs in real life like a normal lunatic, he tries to write about them instead, and releases the resultant books upon the unsuspecting world via famous digital bookstores. More books are bound to follow. Find this peculiar entity here.
