Origins: First Builders
- David Breaker
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
Have you ever wondered where many of our world's great wonders come from? Do you question if our ancestors were guided by beings from a different world? If so, then unlock your inner-Von Daniken, Origins: First Builders may be for you. Origins comes from the publisher Board & Dice, who are known for many successful heavy euro games focused on historical themes. This game steps away from that and attempts to have a more fantastical theme, but the theme takes a step back for what is essentially a mechanically focused game.
In Adam Kwapinski's Origins: First Builders, you are an Archon, guiding a population of freemen, influencing the construction of buildings and monuments, climbing the three mighty zodiac temples and taking part in an arms race — all in an effort to leave the greatest mark on mankind's ancient history.
You start the game with a city consisting of just two building tiles: the Agora tile and the Palace tile. As the game develops, your city will grow in both size and strength as you add new building tiles, each of which has a special ability that triggers when it is first added to a city and when closing a district. Your placement on the military track indicates the rewards you receive when you attack and your chances of becoming the first player. You also have three separate temple tracks to move up, which score you points at the end of the game.
On your turn, you choose from a list of actions, but the main action is a dice (worker) placement that will generate resources or movement up tracks. Your dice placement is restricted depending on the place you want to visit and the value of the die. You can also score a bonus action if you match the right die colour to the worker space. This is where the game has its best but also its worst parts: Origins is a fun eurogame but its theme is completely lost in the mechanics. Don’t get me wrong, the game is a fun puzzle, and it’s a puzzle that can be challenging for new players to pick up. Often your decisions seem tight, with few resources available to make the right choices. It is a clever game, but if you get it, you get it; if you don’t, then you will be left behind in the ruins of civilisation.
The game components are okay, but not superb, especially not up to Board & Dice’s current standards, but then this game is from four years ago.
I'm not saying Origins: First Builders is bad. It isn’t. Just that it doesn’t stand out when there are so many good, well-thought-out and thematically strong eurogames out there. In this case, the aliens' help to build civilisation means it wasn’t enough to stand the test of time.
(Review by David Breaker)
