Paleo is a prehistoric cooperative card game that combines survival and strategy elements, featuring a variety of unique mechanics and components. Players assume the role of early humans, exploring different environments to gain resources, craft resources, and piece together a cave painting before the elements defeat humanity.

To begin with, Paleo is an intensely thematic game. Players must actually discover, learn quickly, and work together throughout the game instead of simply dealing with their own turn. You’ll often need to choose between completing your own task or helping someone else, managing the cost of resources and health among the team. 

There are multiple paths to success. Losing too many human lives will end the game, and events can be punishing. But this only reinforces the feeling of cooperation.

There are some unusual components that also help create an immersive experience. Aside from little wooden resources, there are foldable cardboard pieces that create a literal workbench and graveyard. Along with the boards, your tabletop should be pretty full.

The cards don’t just represent challenges, but also the time you spend. It’s a very clever method of adding significance to player choices. It also escalates the pressure as cards are discarded, so that you feel like you’re really exhausting nearby resources and daylight.

The game references many fundamental human concepts like ingenuity, ideas, and even dreams. This provides a lot of personality, and further bolsters its theme. But there are also fun prehistoric animals to encounter, such as mammoths, adding enough playful entertainment to feel larger than life too.

Paleo’s ability to surprise should not be understated. That unpredictability plays a large role in the immersion of the game. Fortunately, there isn’t so much luck involved that players will lose agency.

There are a lot of components and mechanisms, which can seem intimidating at first. However, it is all sensible and easy to understand. 

Final Thoughts

Paleo is an unexpected delight. It is undoubtedly one of the most thematic games on the market, with inspired mechanics that were distinctly invented by necessity to serve that theme. It moves quickly, demands strategy, and the way it smartly wields cooperation is rare. Paleo is absolutely thrilling, rewarding, and creative.

Score: 8/10