Neanderthal

About this board game

Neanderthal is a board game for 1–3 players that takes about 120 minutes, set in Ice Age Europe in 43,000 BC, at the dawn of modern man.

Choose to play as one of three human species: Archaic, Neanderthal, or Cro-Magnon. Assign your males to hunt Pleistocene megafauna, while trying to avoid predators. Hunting is only one part of survival and development, as your tribe’s future also depends on teaching, specialization, and social choices.

Assign women to teach children vocabulary, helping create cognitive fluidity in the next generation and develop a tribalistic culture. Your elders can specialize in important areas that shape the direction of your people:

• Fire
• War
• Big game
• Inventions
• Animal domestications

Neanderthal also presents three mating strategies: promiscuous, harems, or pair bonding. The strategy you choose affects what victory means for your tribe, making the path to success depend on more than simply gathering resources or surviving dangerous hunts.

Victory may be determined by your hunters, elders, women, vocabulary, trophies, inventions, or domesticated animals. This gives each strategy its own priorities and encourages you to develop your society according to the strengths and opportunities created during play.

As your people advance, they reach the point where the companion game Greenland begins. The two games can flow into one another seamlessly, letting the story of human development continue beyond Neanderthal.