Explore Galapagos in Darwin's Journey, and Use a Llama to Deliver Dye

Explore Galapagos in Darwin's Journey, and Use a Llama to Deliver Dye
Board Game: Darwin's Journey
Darwin's Journey is an involved Eurogame coming from Simone Luciani and Nestore Mangone (designers of Newton) and ThunderGryph Games, with a Kickstarter planned for January 2021.

Here's an overview of this 1-4 player game that plays in 60-120 minutes and that the publisher estimates at a weight of 4 on BGG's 1-5 scale:
Quote:
When all you can identify in the horizon for many long days is the line that detaches the sea from the sky, the glimpse of a distant shore appearing before you will make you shiver at the understanding that the adventure is about to begin.

You find yourself astonished, landing on the shore that will be the origin of an extensive exploration through the Galapagos, a magic place of inconceivable beauty and endless biodiversity. There, you will gather repertoires and expand your knowledge of the natural sciences. Your eyes will learn how to detect the hidden species in the tropical forest, gazing at the countless colors and textures of nature. After inspiring hours spent studying and getting to enlightening conclusions, you will rest under a sparkling sky, admiring the stunning complexity of the animal realm.

Darwin's Journey is a worker-placement Eurogame in which players recall Charles Darwin's memories of his adventure through the Galapagos islands, which contributed to the development of his theory of evolution.

Board Game: Darwin's Journey

With the game's innovative worker progression system, each worker will have to study the disciplines that are a prerequisite to perform several actions in the game, such as exploration, correspondence, gathering, and dispatch of repertoires found on the island to museums in order to contribute to the human knowledge of biology. The game lasts five rounds, and thanks to several short- and long-term objectives, every action you take will grant victory points in different ways.
ThunderGryph has more details of the mechanisms of Darwin's Journey on its website, with the first two topics covering how workers can progress and explore and how players deliver their research to museums; a new topic is being revealed every ten days or so.

Board Game Publisher: Treecer
• Swiss publisher Treecer, which debuted in 2019 with Darwin's Choice, is heading to a different continent for its giant 2021 release: P'achakuna from designers Stefan Kraft and Moreno Vogel, which is being Kickstarted (link) through Dec. 2, 2020.

Here's an overview of this two-player-only game that plays in 30-60 minutes:
Quote:
P'achakuna takes you on a journey in the heart of the Andes together with your most loyal friend — your llama. The game includes both black and white llamas, with you controlling one color and your opponent the other. White llamas move only through the green valleys, while black llamas scale the barren mountains. Whatever the color, however, you want to visit mountain villages to deliver the dye that they desire, ideally collecting dye for yourself along the way.

In P'achakuna, each player starts with one llama of their color in the center of the board in the white village, with a white dye loaded on its back. The board is composed of hexagonal tiles that are either half valley/half mountain, two-thirds valley/one-third mountain, or vice versa. The tiles are extremely thick so that you can grab the mountain section of the tile and pluck it from the board. Six villages sit on the perimeter of the game board, each corresponding to one of the primary or secondary colors. Each village has a random demand tile in it that shows two colors, one in high demand and one in low demand; neither of these colors can match the color of the village.

Board Game: P'achakuna

On a turn, you may first rotate one unoccupied tile; by paying two dye resources from your personal supply, you can rotate a second tile. You then must move each of your llamas at least one space, but you can move them further if you desire and if the terrain allows them to do this. You rotate tiles to create long paths of valley or mountain so that ideally your llamas can travel far with each move.

If you move a llama into a village, you trade the dye on that llama. If the dye you carry isn't in demand in that village, you simply trade that dye for the dye from the village, say, green for yellow. If the dye is in demand, then you add 1-2 dye of that delivered color to your personal supply (depending on whether the demand is low or high), then you place a dye matching the color of that village on your llama. If you collect a color in your personal supply and don't have it in your scoring track, you can place it in your scoring track. No matter what, you replace the demand tile in that village, making sure the color of that village isn't on the demand tile.

During a turn in a village, you can hand in four dye from your personal supply to acquire a new llama that is then placed in that village with a dye from that village on its back. Each llama moves on your turn, and you can have at most three llamas.

As soon as you have one dye of each of the seven colors on your scoring track, you win.
Board Game: P'achakuna

Notes Treecer's Marc Dür: "Like all our products, P'achakuna, if successfully funded, will be produced carbon neutral, FSC certified and produced in Germany. Sustainability and high quality are very important to us and a must for all our products!"

For this project, Treecer is working with Swiss NGO Suyana, which provides development aid in the rural areas of Peru and Bolivia. Says Dür, "All copies of the game will include an original, handmade bag from Bolivia, and if backers want to support Suyana directly, they can choose from two add-ons: small handmade plush llamas from Peru or a larger version of the bag to store the whole game in it. Therefore, our game directly supports the local community and pays the sewers fairly."

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