Fossilium Board Game Review

Jim Gamer

4 minutes ago

7 min read

Fossilium

WBG Score: 8

Player Count: 1-4

You’ll like this if you like: Euros to be brown and about fossils

Published by: Giant Roc, Sinister Fish Games

This is a free review copy of the original German version from Giant Roc. The new enhanced version from Sinister Fish is coming to Kickstarter soon. See our review policy here

Fossilium is a clever, satisfying museum-building game that makes digging up dinosaurs feel far more strategic than simply pulling tiles from a bag. One important note before getting into it. The version I have played is the existing German edition of Fossilium, while Sinister Fish Games is preparing an enhanced English edition for an upcoming crowdfunding campaign. You can find out more about that here. It looks great!

So this review is based on the game as it currently exists rather than any improvements, component changes or refinements coming with that new edition. But I was kindly given the rule book in English via PDF! What matters most though, is that underneath all that is already a very good worker-placement game, and one I thoroughly enjoy.

Building Your Museum

Fossilium puts you in charge of a natural history museum with a rather significant problem: the galleries are basically empty. Across five rounds you will excavate fossil pieces, assemble skeletons, attract visitors, generate income and gradually turn a sparse museum into something considerably more impressive. The game is won on Victory Points, but those points come from enough different directions that simply collecting the biggest dinosaur you can find is not going to do the job. Although, it is often my goal!

Each player has their own museum board containing a gallery, storage area, shops and entrances. Fossils come in sizes of one, two, four or six tiles, and larger specimens need to be pieced together correctly before they form a complete skeleton. You can start exhibiting a fossil once you own at least half of its required pieces, which means your gallery can slowly develop rather than forcing you to wait until every bone has been found.

Placement matters just as much as completion. Shops reward matching fossil types placed within their rows, entrances generate Guests from matching fossils in their columns, while Pedestals can add end-game value to the larger exhibits. This turns what initially looks like a straightforward tile-placement area into a spatial puzzle where the position of every fossil can potentially affect several different systems.

Digging For Dinosaurs

Every round follows four phases: Income, Actions, Opening and Excavation. Income rewards the museum you have already constructed, but the Action Phase is where most of your decisions happen. Here players take turns placing workers onto empty spaces on the Action Board and immediately carrying out the action shown in that row. Single spaces need one worker, double spaces need two, and some spaces also gain or cost Dino Dollars. The key thing to remember is that rows determine the action, while columns determine where those workers will excavate later.

Actions include Exhibit fossils from storage into your museum, Build Info Panels or Donate fossil tiles to other players, Buy/Sell fossils through the market, Tour to gain Guests or Dino Dollars, use a costly Joker space to repeat an action in that column, or take a simple Management action for a Guest, Intern or Dino Dollar. The fourth column usually gives a stronger bonus version of an action, but workers placed there will not excavate later.

The third part of each round is called Opening. Opening converts the crowds you have attracted into points, and Excavation gives you the fossils needed to improve everything next time around. It creates a satisfying cycle because almost everything you do in one phase influences something coming later.

The Action Board is the star of Fossilium. There are rows for actions such as exhibiting fossils, building Info Panels, buying and selling, running tours and using more flexible abilities, but the column you choose is equally important. The first three columns correspond to different excavation sites, meaning you are simultaneously choosing what you want to do now and where you want to dig later.

That creates some excellent little dilemmas. You might desperately need an Exhibit action, but the only available space sends your worker towards an excavation site containing very little you currently want. Alternatively, you may sacrifice the perfect action space because you know you desperately need pieces from another bag. It is a simple connection between mechanisms, but it gives virtually every worker placement more weight than it first appears to have.

The Excavation Puzzle

Excavation itself brings some welcome uncertainty. When you dig, you draw a number of tiles based on the workers in that column, but you may only keep a number equal to your own workers there. So other players can effectively improve the size of your draw without increasing how much you are allowed to take, creating moments where you reveal several tempting fossils and have to choose which ones matter most.

There is obviously luck involved. Sometimes the perfect piece appears immediately, while another excavation can produce absolutely nothing you need. Crucially, Fossilium gives you ways to work around that randomness through the market, Interns, donations and other effects, so I rarely felt that the bags were simply deciding the game for me. Interns are particularly useful because they let you draw several tiles from a chosen excavation site and keep one, giving you another shot at the fossil you are hunting.

Permanent Workers also make the excavation system more interesting as the game develops. New workers can be earned by completing objectives, and those extra workers eventually become permanently attached to excavation columns, strengthening your personal draws from those sites. They then return for use during the final round, which gives the system a nice progression from fairly modest early excavations to much stronger options later.

Guests, Regulars and Momentum

The Guest Track is another part of Fossilium I really like. Completing fossils, arranging exhibits and triggering other effects generates Guests, and during the Opening Phase those visitors convert into Victory Points. They normally disappear afterwards, but achieving the round objectives earns you Regulars who permanently remain on the track and therefore give you a head start in subsequent rounds.

That gives the game a pleasing sense of growth. Early rounds can feel relatively restrained, but once your museum starts producing income, Guests and Regulars more efficiently, everything begins accelerating. There is a genuine feeling that the little collection you started with has become a functioning attraction, rather than your engine simply producing slightly larger numbers each round.

I also like that incomplete fossils are not useless. They can already contribute towards your museum's income and visitor generation, and fossils placed on Pedestals can still receive the Pedestal bonus even when unfinished. That makes the hunt for the final piece exciting without making every incomplete skeleton feel like wasted effort.

More Going On Than You Expect

Fossilium looks fairly approachable when first laid out, but there is quite a lot happening underneath. You are managing workers, fossil sets, spatial placement, money, Guests, objectives, the market and several different scoring opportunities at the same time. None of the individual mechanisms is especially complicated, but understanding how they interact takes a little longer.

That is probably the game's biggest hurdle. The iconography and quantity of bonuses mean the first play involves a fair amount of checking, particularly when dealing with Info Panels, fossil abilities and some of the objectives. Once those systems settle in, however, the game becomes much smoother because the core loop itself is logical and consistent.

The physical footprint is also significant. Between the central boards, excavation bags, player museums, market, fossils and assorted components, Fossilium wants plenty of table space. The large fossil standees are fun and certainly add presence to completed exhibits, although mechanically they mostly serve as reminders and a secondary tiebreaker rather than introducing another meaningful system.

Pros

Excellent worker-placement twist. Choosing an action and an excavation destination with the same placement creates meaningful decisions throughout the game.
The museum genuinely develops. Fossils, Info Panels, Regulars and income build into an increasingly satisfying engine.
Luck is present but manageable. Excavation retains the excitement of discovering something unexpected without leaving you completely at the mercy of the bags.
Strong spatial puzzle. Where you exhibit fossils can matter almost as much as which fossils you collect.

Cons

There is a noticeable learning curve. Several interconnected systems and plenty of iconography make the first game slower than the core rules initially suggest.
It needs plenty of table space. This is not a compact museum.
The excavation bags can occasionally frustrate. Mitigation exists, but sometimes the fossil you need simply refuses to appear.
Some components feel more decorative than necessary. The standees look impressive, but they contribute little mechanically. Is this really a con?!

Final Thoughts

Fossilium succeeds because its theme and mechanisms genuinely support each other. Excavating does not exist as a disconnected mini-game, worker placement is not simply a list of actions, and your museum is not just somewhere to dump collected tiles. Everything feeds into everything else, which makes finding a fossil, placing it cleverly and seeing the resulting visitors arrive genuinely satisfying.

There is enough randomness to make every excavation interesting, but enough control to make your decisions matter. There is also enough going on that I immediately wanted another play once I understood the systems properly, because Fossilium clearly offers several different ways to squeeze more value from the same five rounds. The German edition already provides a strong foundation, so I am particularly interested to see what Sinister Fish Games does with the forthcoming enhanced English release.

Fossilium is an easy game to like once you get past its initial learning curve. It is thematic, thoughtful and full of satisfying little connections, particularly the excellent relationship between worker placement and excavation. If this all sounds like fun to you, the enhanced edition could well be something worth checking out. I certainly plan too!