Every now and then, a game comes along that I think hits the perfect medium point between the more complex qualities of hobby gaming and the more accessible, populist values of mainstream board games. It’s a rare thing, almost the produce of an intangible X-factor charm, for a game to provide both enough substance for the hobby gamer and enough commercial punch to appease the gaming-averse public.

When it happens what seems to result are highly thematic and competitive games with relatively simple rules and approachable playtimes. Recent games such as HEROSCAPE and NEXUS OPS are the most readily at-hand examples of this phenomenon, although HEROQUEST and AXIS AND ALLIES are earlier proof of the value of games with strong crossover appeal and this elusive element. Yet it was in Essen that a tiny, upstart UK publisher called Make A Game debuted such a game, its maiden production, among the myriad of farming and efficiency planning titles more suited to middle managers and accounting aficionados than fun-seeking gamers, families, or children. This little game? CAVEMAN.

CAVEMAN was one of those instances where the theme and presentation of a game really drew my interest, the box featuring a rampaging Tyrannosaurus attacking a group of cavepeople against a prehistoric backdrop, which of course includes an erupting volcano. It’s a completely fantastic tableau, of course, but this isn’t a simulation like ORIGINS: HOW WE BECAME HUMAN. When I was a kid, I loved dinosaurs, and I loved the idea of cavemen fighting dinosaurs. I even drew pictures of cavemen fighting dinosaurs with volcanoes erupting in the background myself and here was a game that really appealed to the part of me that plays games for no other reason than to have simple, childlike fun. When I found out that the game included seven fully painted dinosaur miniatures, the game became a must-have.

Admittedly, I was still a little apprehensive about the game, fearing that it would fall along the lines of most contemporary Eurogames that might reduce the struggle between man and dinosaur to a series of auctions or even worse, to some sanitized affair wherein little blood is shed between players who simply strive to survive against a game system. Fortunately, CAVEMAN is gloriously old fashioned- it’s almost like twenty years of game design never happened and anyone who grew up with games in the house might find themselves wondering if this is actually some long-lost game from their childhood. There are no auctions, no victory point track, no subtle balancing mechanisms, and no clever mathematical gymnastics apparent in the design. It’s just a fun game, and sometimes that’s a better design objective to me than crafting the most elaborate, intricately interwoven mechanics into something resembling a game but more closely akin to an academic exercise.

CAVEMAN is an intensively competitive struggle for survival that finds each player in charge of a group of island-bound cavepeople jostling for the control of the resource tiles such as berries and fur that are needed to generate technology advances such as Fire or the Wheel that each confer a simple benefit. In addition, players must also manage reproduction (which in this game requires three people- someone has to bring food), engage in direct combat with other tribes, and go flint-to-tooth with three different varieties of rampaging dinosaurs. Winning the game is accomplished by either completing all five of the technology advances, having all eight adult cavepeople on the board, or by having the most adults and advances by the time the volcano in the center of the island blows its top when the card deck runs out.

It is a card driven system, so each turn a player draws a card that provides a number of cavepeople movement points that can be used to bring on new adult cavepeople if the player has less than four already on the board or to split up between already on-board pieces, and either dinosaur movement points or an event. The dinosaurs are community owned and operated, so there is a lot of table talk about who deserves their attention and plenty of pleading from those so targeted and each rolls a different number of attack dice- the fearsome T-Rex gets to roll three dice, which means he can wipe out an entire family in one gulp. The events add a lot of unpredictability and fun as well as some narrative material; campfires are doused by rain, harsh winters spell certain death for cavekids, or that T-Rex might suddenly appear out of nowhere. The severely luck-allergic will likely break out in hives, but the spirit of the game is such that anyone who complains about it should be branded a fun-murdering spoilsport and their cavepeople immediately marked for the brunch buffet on Dinosaur Island.

As I’ve emphasized, it’s a simple game that is actually quite abstract despite a very strong theme that carries through to its mechanics. Yet the game actually hits a lot of the strong points of civilization-style games: the development, resource control, and population growth and expansion are all present even if only in précis. The detail that is there is both narratively significant and fun—like having male (Patrick Swayze) and female (Jennifer Connely) cavepeople as well as cavekids (Haley Joel Osment). There are differences between the sexes, as males can hunt animals but females can gather berries. When a cavekid is born, the player can roll at the end of each turn to see if they survive and become an adult or if they die some hideous stone age death before coming of age.

The combat system is a simple hit-or-miss deal, much like HEROQUEST or HEROSCAPE, but the really cool idea that CAVEMAN brings to it is that certain technologies increase your odds by giving you a hit on another die face. So your cavepeople always hit on roll that shows a caveman face (Kenny Rogers) but not on the spear. But if you manage to develop the spear by claiming two flint resource tiles, then you can commence to stabbing that pesky Stegosaurus when it comes up again. The resource mechanic is very basic- the technologies are created when a player has two cavepeople situated on two different resource tiles, which are randomly distributed at the beginning of the game. I’m immediately reminded of a mechanic from the UK mass-market classic ESCAPE FROM COLDITZ where you’ve got to have two POWs in different rooms to acquire escape tools. Since the placement is random, each game plays out differently- a tribe might be in a region rich or poor in a particular resource so movement and control of areas is a significant factor.

I’m convinced after a number of often hilarious, memorable plays of the game that if it had been released in the 1980s by a company like Milton Bradley that it would be regarded with the same fondness as SURVIVE—another game that appears to be a prime influence on CAVEMAN’s design. There is a certain wanton charm, likely the product of wrecking the best laid plans of others to survive in an unforgiving environment, present in both games and like SURVIVE, CAVEMAN has ample potential for drama, sudden turns of fortune, alliances of convenience, and the inevitable extraction of revenge for past transgressions that makes the game incredibly fun beyond the great theme and strong but simple mechanical suite. It’s also really funny how the game creates its own sense of conditional morality and cracked narrative structure- in some games, I’ve seen it become terribly unbecoming for a caveman to use a cavewoman as a human shield and anyone that does so is subject to relentless ribbing. In other games, certain resource areas become notorious as dinosaur feeding grounds and in still others it seems that those crazy cavekids never catch a break and wind up rolling that dreaded skull every time they try to grow up.