Welcome to Dino World

Product Information

Dinosaur World is a worker placement, tile placement dinosaur theme park building game four two to four players. Games can take between 60 to 120 minutes, with higher player counts taking longer until all involved have had experience with the game. The central playing area. I will warn you now, this game can be a table hog! Guests are always looking for something new and more exciting, and it's not like nature was gonna make new Dinosaur types. These tokens can be removed by sending workers to clean them during the Jeeple Tour phase. The algae collected can then be exchanged for DNA, the precious resource used to make the dinosaurs. This new mechanic works nicely with the base game and really drives the theme home, as it fits perfectly with the aquatic dinosaurs. As a free action (no die required) a player can select a research ability which allows the player to adjust a die by one. The die is not physically changed as all players use the same dice pool. The value of the die can be increased beyond six allowing players to build the bigger dinosaur pens, without having to combine multiple die. The Dinoverse is many things to many people, but everyone I’ve played these games with agrees on one thing: these are the greatest dice in dice history. They feel great in the hands, have a satisfyingly chunky feel to them, and for reasons that only the Dinoverse (and the film series) can explain, they are an amber color that stand out no matter where they happen to be on your table.

Jeeple Tour – Plan your Jeeple’s route to score the most excitement and/or most potential tourist deaths These are the questions I ask, but I get that for some people, roll-and-write games are not for them. Some players can also hurdle the challenge of getting a big game to a big table with ease; in that case, I think Dinosaur World is going to fit best. This creates a number of problems. You need to be in a well-lit room. You need to not be 47 years old and suffering from near-blindness. (Maybe that’s just my problem.) You need to NOT play this at a bar or game cafe that doesn’t have large tables. This is a tight game on a 6-foot long, 3-foot wide table, as noted previously. At one friend’s house, Dinosaur World required a small poker table on the side to hold all the stuff. The power generators also behave slightly differently. You can add a total of eight generators (rather than 12) and each generator produces four megawatts of energy to an adjacent pen. So, one generator might supply four pens or supply one pen four times. Every time you build a new pen you also increase your threat level depending on the dino drawn. A herbivore will increase the threat by one and a carnivore will increase your threat by two.

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Dinosaur World is a lot of fun, but it is much more likely that I pull down Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write to play because it’s so much easier to set up and play right away. I liked Dinosaur World. I definitely prefer it to Dinosaur Island. The randomness of the hooligans has been removed (replaced with the randomness of dice at dinosaur exhibits, but I preferred this mechanic) and the park building aspect was placed center stage, a theme that has more relevance to me. Building the parks is very enjoyable, as are the decisions of when and how to use your workers. I only wish the Jeeple Tour was a bit more robust. Overall, I recommend this game, especially if dinosaurs or theme parks are your thing!

And this is where Dinosaur World breaks away from the other two Dinoverse games: it’s a tile-and-route-building game, and the variability comes in many forms thanks to three public goal/milestone cards each player is working towards. This also enlarges the game’s footprint considerably, as players place hexagonal tiles from their player board’s Welcome Center to build a considerable tableau across a table. If you are wondering, Dinogenics is my favorite dinosaur game. While Dinosaur World’s park building is more thematic, I prefer Dinogenics’ gameplay and game length. If you were NOT wondering… well, I guess it is too late. Sorry. 😊 ) Two types of facilities can be built depending on the die value selected; recreation and welfare. Recreation facilities are built with a one, two or three and welfare facilities are built with a four, five or six. These facilities have certain placement restrictions and scoring requirements. Excitement scores players cash to spend the next round. Five rounds later, the game is over. Tally up those scores, subtract points for any dead guests (yes, this will happen), and declare one player the winner! I mean, look at all of this! The Big Negative? The BignessThat’s too long for a solo game. As a parent, I approach the gaming experience more and more from an accessibility mindset: what game is the easiest one to get to the table? Which game offers nice, crunchy decisions with a setup, play and teardown time in under an hour? What gives me chances at near infinite replayability? Which one will my wife play with me more consistently? Welcome to Dino World is a roll and write where players are competing to build the best dinosaur park. Players use dice to build special buildings, power generators and build dinosaur pens, draw paths to connect to the park’s entrance and attempt to stop dinosaurs attempting to escape. Players are also competing for visitor cards (aka objectives) and being the first to claim them means that you can deny your opponents from getting them. Jurassic Park was an amazing movie and ahead of its time (watch the Netflix show on it if you do not believe me) Examples of the three dinosaur types, from left to right: Herbivores, Small Carnivores, Hard Carnivores.

Let’s confirm this much: if you have Dinosaur Island, I think Dinosaur World is the better game and I’d replace Dinosaur Island with Dinosaur World if I had all the money in the world. If you don’t have any of the Dinoverse games, you are looking for an excellent Jurassic Park simulator AND you have a large table and the time to regularly get in a 2-hour experience, Dinosaur World is an excellent choice. Dinosaur World simplifies many steps that I thought were a bit of a stumble in Dinosaur Island. In Dinosaur World, round steps are easy to teach but thinky, especially as you plan out how to run your “Jeeple” (the game’s term for your wooden Jeep playing piece) on a tour of your personal theme park. Before that, you’ll take steps that are quite easy. This is especially true when you consider solo play. I only played Dinosaur World once solo for this review, and that was enough to confirm what I already guessed: Dinosaur Island Rawr ‘n Write is simply the better game for a single player, mainly because there is no setup/teardown time. You can get all of that Dinoverse magic in about 20 minutes. It took me about 75 minutes to set up, play solo, and put away Dinosaur World.

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If that was not enough there is also the danger mode which all of the above can be played with as well. The amount of content is higher than the tallest T-Rex and more varied than the dinosaurs pens you can draw. Depending on the danger level certain generators might malfunction. If they malfunction, then a part of the dino pen is damaged. If all the squares in a pen are damaged, then the dino escapes and causes additional damage to adjacent pens. Final Thoughts on Welcome to Dino World

I was torn between this one or Dinosaur Island Rawr ‘n’ Write, but as I’ve already mentioned the big version of that, I figured I’d pop this underappreciated gem on the list instead. This is a great little roll and write that has you building up a dinosaur park. That is definitely a popular theme here, Jurassic Park has a lot to answer for! Anyways, with Dino World you’re building up a dino park with some randomised facilities to give you different scoring conditions each time you play. You’ve also got a different set of research cards which give you access to those sort of ‘re-roll a die’ powers you get in roll and write games. At a high level though, you play as a bunch of kids who are going to a school near an experimental particle accelerator called The Loop. Strange things keep happening and the kids all get curious and decide to investigate. You have a story to play through, but you also need to do all those kid things like homework and taking the dog for a walk. If you neglect this stuff you may get grounded. That means you can’t go out and investigate and things start slipping by. There are definitely a few rough edges with Tales from the Loop. There were a few moments when it felt like a rule was missing. But if you can see past that and really get into the exploration of the fantastic setting, you’re going to have a good time. Now with dinosaurs! Once you’ve finished drafting dice and tiles, and taking private actions on your player board , you’ll run your tour, scoring points, cash, and/or excitement along the way. The shape of the path will be determined by the pip value of the die. A player can draw multiple paths as a single action if the total value of the paths does not exceed the pip value of the die.My only two other issues, which are both player count specific, is that at three or four players, the game can overstay its welcome, especially if you have AP prone players. In addition, anything beyond two players and the game is really a table hog. I enjoyed the game the most with at players. Final Thoughts: