In The Footsteps of Darwin

In The Footsteps of Darwin is a puzzle sort of game where players sail on the famous Beagle, collecting – or bearing witness to – multiple species of the animal kingdom.

The shared board shows nine animal tiles, each of which shows a species type and a home continent. On your turn, you take any of the three tiles on the row or column the Beagle is currently adjacent to, and then a replacement tile is added as you move the ship on, as it sails around the perimeter of this 3×3 grid. If you took the closest tile the ship moves one space, if you took the next tile it will move twice, and the tile furthest away, it moves three times. This may be helpful strategically (see Sam Says)

The tile you take goes on your own board. You have a column for each continent and a row for each species: place it on its matching spot. Some tiles have an instant reward, such as gaining a Guide, Chart, or Compass. Guides can be spent to push the Beagle on one space before you take a tile in a later turn, or to refresh the tiles in your current spot. Charts and compasses we’ll come to shortly.

Although your personal board has 19 spots on it, the game will actually end after everyone has had twelve turns, and if at any point you place a tile on top of another tile – because it’s the same species and continent combo – you get to take a Theory token. Theories are another way to score points – you begin the game with one theory already – depending on what tiles you end the game with. At that point all visible tiles score their points value (if they have one) and the number of tiles with charts on them are multiplied by however many compasses you have. You may also score for Publications, which are simply points for filling a row or column, and finally see how well you did on all your theories. Most points is the winner!