How to Play

Paleo

2-4 players 45-60 min 7.7 Board Game Geek Rating

In this cooperative stone age adventure, players manage primitive humans with unique skills, exploring dangerous locations to gather resources while avoiding death. Each turn, you visit locations to find food, materials, and crafting opportunities, but face unpredictable threats. Victory requires completing quests and painting a mammoth cave artwork before accumulating too many deaths ends your tribe's survival.

Published 2020

Paleo

Get Ready

Setup the game with these step-by-step instructions before diving into your turn.

1
Place main boards
Set up the Base Camp, Wilderness, and Night boards in the center of the play area
2
Assemble workbench and graveyard
Put together the Workbench (with tool slots) and Graveyard, placing both near the Base Camp
3
Prepare resource tokens
Take 20 Food, 12 Wood, and 8 Stone tokens and place nearby as a supply
4
Set out damage tokens
Place 40 Damage tokens nearby as a supply
5
Sort tool tokens
Organize 40 Tool tokens by type: 5 Torch, 5 Hand Axe, 5 Spear (placed in Workbench matching spots), plus remaining tools (3 Rope, 2 Hatchet, 3 Trap, 4 Raft, 2 Tame Wolf, 9 Pelt, 2 Clothing, 2 Talisman, 1 Headdress, 3 Tent, 2 Roots) as supply
6
Place victory and skull tokens
Put 5 Victory tokens and 5 Skull tokens near the Night board as a supply
7
Sort card sets
Organize all 15 Card Sets, boxing the 10 blank cards
8
Shuffle core decks
Separately shuffle facedown the Humans (20), Dreams (16), and Ideas (8) decks, placing each on matching Night board space
9
Choose scenario modules
Select any 2 Modules (Module J must be added to any other pair)
10
Prepare main deck
Shuffle Base Cards and remaining Module cards together facedown
11
Set up player groups
Determine groups based on player count (Solo: 1 Group; 2-3P: 1 Group each; 4P: 3 or 4 Groups)
12
Deal player decks
For solo, use the entire shuffled deck; for 2-4 players, deal cards as evenly as possible to each Group

On Your Turn

What you can do during your turn.

1
Choose action simultaneously
Each Group decides to either Explore or Go to Sleep Early
2
Explore option
Look at top 3 cards of your Deck facedown, choose 1 facedown, return others to top of Deck facedown without changing their original order
3
Go to Sleep Early option
Discard ALL remaining cards in your Deck to the discard pile; you are now Asleep
4
Reveal cards
All Exploring Groups simultaneously flip their chosen card faceup
5
Call for Help (solo only)
You may Call for Help once per Explore, gaining temporary bonus Abilities by spending Food (roll 1 die) or spending 2 Food (roll 2 dice); roll before any Action dice rolls
6
Discuss and resolve
Players discuss strategy, then in order decided by players as a team, each Group resolves exactly 1 option of their card
7
Check for sleep
Each Group with 0 cards remaining in Deck is now Asleep
8
Repeat until done
Remaining Groups repeat the process until ALL Groups are Asleep
9
Identify card type
Blue background indicates Action card; red background and/or danger symbol in northwest indicates Danger card
10
Follow placement instructions
If northwest has Place instructions, you MUST do that and resolution ends
11
Select one action
Choose one of the available Actions on the card
12
Help another group
Only if the Help art appears on your card; add your Humans' Abilities to the Helped Group
13
Ignore option
Only available for Action cards or if you have a Torch to use on a Danger card
14
Discard resolved cards
Place resolved card faceup to the Night board's discard space; Helping cards wait until after all Helped cards are discarded
15
Meet ability requirements
Satisfy Craft, Perception, and Strength abilities using Humans and Tool tokens (some require spending to use)
16
Roll dice for requirements
Roll for additional pre-requisites before committing any Tool tokens
17
Pay card costs
Discard indicated number of cards facedown to Night board's discard pile
18
Spend resources
Discard required Food, Wood, Stone, or Tool tokens to supply
19
Take damage
Take source's indicated number of tokens from supply
20
Assign to one human
Whoever has the damage assigns all of it to one Human in their Group
21
Prevent damage
Humans with Tame Wolf may use it to prevent damage before taking it
22
Place damage tokens
Put damage tokens on Health spaces on the Human card
23
Human death
If all Health spaces are covered, that Human dies: discard all damage tokens, discard the Human to Graveyard, and place 1 Skull token on Night board
24
Replace dead humans
If not endgame and all your Humans died, immediately draw one new Human like in Setup
25
Heal damage
If healing effects available, divide healing among Humans in your Group plus any Group you are Helping or is Helping you
26
Craft tools
For each desired token, must have the corresponding Idea card and token in supply (unless specified otherwise); pay the recipe cost (usually Resources and/or other Tool tokens)
27
Draw Idea card
Place faceup on an empty Workbench slot; if none empty, discard a different one to make room; take all matching Tool tokens from supply
28
Draw Dream card
Draw facedown from Dreams deck and place on top of your Deck
29
Draw new Human
Immediately get one new Human just like in Setup
30
Search Secrets
Search Secrets cards on Night board and draw indicated number faceup; resolve as an additional Action
31
Feed humans
Count all food requirement icons across all Groups; discard that number of Food tokens from Base Camp
32
Resolve Mission cards
For each moon symbol in the Camp section of the Night board, must resolve 1 of the Actions beneath (players choose which one and whose Group pays costs)
33
Resolve Night cards
Each Group with cards having moon symbols must resolve 1 of the Actions there
34
Prepare for next day
Shuffle together facedown the cards on Night board's discard and play areas
35
Deal new decks
Deal shuffled cards to Groups facedown as evenly as possible
36
View cardbacks
May look at your Deck's cardbacks facedown at any time without changing their order
37
View Ideas
May look at the Ideas area on Night board at any time
38
Resolve passive conditions
At any time on your Turn, may resolve passive conditions on cards (usually in Camp or Group) in addition to regular resolve
39
No tool trading
May NOT trade Tool tokens, even when Helping
40
Asleep status
Your Group is out of play and may not resolve cards or Actions for the rest of the Day Phase

Winning

How to claim victory.

1
Victory condition
Collect 5 Victory tokens to immediately end the game with a win
2
Loss condition
Accumulate 5 Skull tokens to end the game with a loss
3
Simultaneous tie
If you reach 5 Victory tokens and 5 Skull tokens simultaneously, you win
4
After game cleanup
Re-sort all cards back into their original decks

watch & Learn

Let the pros teach you with these top videos.

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