Minecraft Explorers

We kick off game #1 of our “UKGE ROUNDUP 2024” with “Minecraft Explorers,” which we played at the Ravensburger stand.

The game is a cooperative card game where you try to gain a certain amount of 4 out of 5 different types of items.

You begin with a “shop” of 5 items, all costing various amounts of food. You can use the food to turn these over and gain these items, which you can then use to either gain other things or defeat monsters.

Every time you have your turn, there is a nighttime phase where you turn over a monster card. If it is a card you do not already have drawn, then your turn ends (which is good); otherwise, you keep drawing monster cards until you pull one you do not already have a duplicate of. This means the game can snowball very quickly, and if you have multiple monsters, you need to start dealing with them.

This can be done with food as well, or weapons can be used to lower that value. When you defeat a monster, you keep the card, and if you have defeated a matching pair of monsters, these get the option to use bonus food.

We really enjoyed it and narrowly completed it on its easiest setting. The recent Minecraft coop games have all been a little easier, but this seems like it could be more challenging at higher difficulties.

Another benefit is, unlike most of the previous Ravensburger releases, this one is perfect for travel and comes in a fairly small box.

We had a good time with this, and it definitely seemed like an engaging card game and a better one than the previous non-Ravensburger ones.

The game is due out at the end of July/ August, and I will do a full review once I have a retail copy and have more time to play a few more games.