Fossilium – great eurogame

Fossilium is a game by Julia Thiemann and Christoph Waage, based on scientific knowledge and developed in cooperation with the Museum of Natural History in Berlin (Museum für Naturkunde). It plays 2–4 people plus a solo mode. The entry threshold is fairly high, and you can count on at least 2 hours of solid fun.

As the director of a natural history museum specializing in paleontology, your mission is to turn your institution into the go-to place for fossil lovers. You’ll do this through excavations, collecting fossils, placing them in display cases, and finally opening your exhibition to visitors – which is, to some extent, the core goal of the game and brings you more and more victory points each round.

A paleontologist’s guide, aka how not to get lost in the museum

A game is played over 5 rounds that differ a bit from each other, but the main structure stays the same:

Step one – income. You’ve gotta start the day with something, right? So you “activate” the rows and columns of your player board, which — assuming you cleverly arranged your fossil tiles — will generate some dino-dollars and a few visitors.

Step two is the meat of the game: classic worker placement.
You place a worker (or two) and take an action; the space becomes locked for the rest of the round.

What kind of actions?
• Putting fossils on display (they don’t have to be complete yet).
• Making a donation to another museum (i.e., giving another player a missing fossil tile — for a hefty fee, of course).
• Building an attraction — like toilets ;) Because museums don’t run on fossils alone. Viewing platforms, restaurants, various conveniences… all that good stuff that gives you bonuses.
• Another juicy action everyone is eyeing: heading to the marketplace to buy/sell. Excavating is cool, but many a fine dinosaur bone has been found at a flea market.

These are the main actions you’ll use a lot — the rest I’ll skip, since they’re more like filler points and niche moves.

Once all meeples are done working, we get to step three:

We open the museum gates, and a wild crowd appears… but hold on, where did they come from? Well, the crowd comes from the previous phases: income, actions, completing exhibits… Those visitors storm in, look around, and get turned into victory points. ;)

We also check whether our museum met the round’s requirement, granting us permanent visitors — the hardcore fans who basically move in. They sleep here, eat here, can’t imagine life outside the exhibition. Those we place on the visitor track, and from now on, instead of resetting visitors to zero each round, we reset to the number of permanent visitors. This means faster growth in future rounds. Definitely worth investing in them.

After dealing with the visitors, it’s excavation time.

The main board is split not only into action rows but also into columns, each of the first three tied to a specific bag — white, grey, or black. Workers placed in those columns earlier now go digging.

Mechanically:
The player draws as many fossil tiles from that column’s bag as there are total workers in said column, and keeps as many tiles as they personally have workers there.

Quick conclusion:
No meeples in a column = no digging from that bag.

Is it worth planning which column you use? Yes and no. Sometimes you’re so desperate for a specific action that you jump into whatever slot is open. But generally, yes, planning helps — especially because large fossils are tied to specific bags. Plateosaurus only in white, Stegosaurus only in grey, T-Rex only in black. Cycadales and Plesiosaurus appear in all three, but the three listed above are not the only examples of specific fossils tied to specific bags. So if you need Stegosaurus tiles, you won’t find them in the white or black bag.

And so — without going further into detail — you play 5 similar rounds, filling up your board (not always completely), then finish with final scoring: majorities, bonuses from 6- and 4-tile fossils, bonuses from attractions.

Three hours. Four with rules explanation.

That’s the answer to “how long does it take?” It feels light at first glance, but explaining — it takes a while. Lots of actions, plenty of bonuses — and the iconography doesn’t help. There’s also more thinking than expected: fitting tiles, counting points… Time flies, the museum fills up, and suddenly it’s midnight and you should’ve gone home an hour ago.

It’s a very good game. The current rating close to 8/10 on BGG isn’t exaggerated. It’s engaging and demands real planning. After one session you’ll want to play again — not the same day,  ofcourse — to try a different strategy and squeeze even more from the bonuses.

Even though it’s a completely different style of game, it reminds me of Ark Nova in terms of vibe. First game: chaos, no clue what I’m doing. But I want more. Second game: “ohhh okay, I see the depth here.” And again — I want more.

You’re gonna need a bigger table.

Fossilium needs not only brainpower but also space. Main board, round board, market, scoring track, three large bags, your not-so-small museum boards… and the dinosaurs. Totally unnecessary dinosaurs.

These little cardboard statues only remind you what the big (6-tile) fossil scores for — but the same info is on the player aid. The rulebook even straight-up says their only purpose is acting as a tiebreaker. You get one when you finish a fossil first and can put it in your museum. Or not — honestly, it gets in the way. It looks nice on your board, but would be better from afar.

“The key to a happy life is accepting that you’re never in control.”

Just like real excavations, you can’t plan everything. But the balance between joyful randomness and thoughtful strategy is actually great.

Sometimes you draw one tile and it’s the perfect one. Sometimes you draw five and none fit. Sometimes you can keep only one (when using interns), but you want all five. And sometimes the bag delivers nothing but junk.

Happily, the game gives you ways out: You can sell tiles, buy missing ones, or even take the action that lets you search the bag for that one perfect tile. It’s not always available each round, but everyone can plan at least one such “lifeline” — or more if lucky. And honestly, it’s quite doable to complete exhibits, not too hard at all — and even incomplete ones can be useful if placed smartly on a pedestal.

A tiny spoon of criticism (but the barrel stays sweet)

Two things stand out:

1. The dinosaur figurines — completely unnecessary. Worse, the more you assemble/disassemble them (and you have to disassemble them to fit in the box), the more the little legs fall off. If this ever gets a Polish edition, I hope they reconsider including them — nobody wants to pay extra for fragile cardboard statues and fancy inserts.

2. The iconography — not intuitive. During the game it’s easier to remember “this action is in the bottom-left” than to decode the symbols. Same for attractions; I had to check the player aid often. This gets easier after 1–2 games, though.

What bothers me more is a balance detail:
Finishing a fossil gives visitors equal to the number of its tiles. On top of that, depending on the fossil type, you get +1 visitor / +1 intern / +1 dino-dollar. But one visitor is way more valuable than one dino-dollar, and both are far more useful than an intern. Unless we misunderstood the rules and storing fossils in the warehouse is mandatory — then maybe that extra intern would matter.

What can interns do for you?

Interns come from empty storage slots during the income phase. You can use them once per round as an additional action (before or after your main action) — sending all your interns to a bag of your choice. Each one digs up, randomly, one tile. You keep one of the drawn tiles and return the rest to the bag.

So is it worth getting interns outside income?

Yes — if your storage will be full during excavations.
No — if it’ll be pratially empty, whether because you sent most meeples to the 4th column or simply didn’t keep all tiles you could have.

And here’s where we weren’t sure: the rules don’t clearly say whether you must keep all tiles you have space for during excavations. Nor whether you can discard tiles from the warehouse at any time (e.g., to make room for a purchase). This matters a lot tactically, especially with interns.

A little gallery to wrap things up

Fossilium works from 1 to 4 players. The game scales quite well in terms of worker placement, but with 1–2 players you use only two bags — so some dinosaurs simply don’t appear. It doesn’t break the game, but it’s a bit sad. Personally, I strongly recommend it at 3–4 players, because the bag-column planning is an important and fun part of the experience.

 

Ogólna ocena (9/10):

Złożoność gry (5/10):

Oprawa wizualna (8/10):

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