Business Goose is a new studio from Flanders, Belgium that focuses on the development of both video games and board games. Together with Bannan Games, known for great games such as Valda and Dig Your Way Out, they have been working on a new easy family game that will soon appear on Kickstarter. I have been given the opportunity to test a prototype of this colourful and cheerful game, to give you a preview.
Welcome… to Dino Dino! Dino Dino is a simple game where you build a dinosaur park by overlapping cards. By placing these cards, you expand your park. You also collect food and place dino’s to get victory points! The player with the most points has the best dinopark (without a loose T-rex)!
In a turn you do one action. You can take one of landscape cards (either from the facedown deck or one of the open cards placed in the market). These cards consist of three squares in three possible colours. Then you place this card to expand your park. At least one square must be placed over a square of an already placed card, but you may not place a new card overlapping all the squares. Colour does not matter when placing a card. Some cards also have food on them. If you place a card with food on it, you may take a food token matching one of the food spaces shown. If you manage to place squares containing food next to squares containing similar food, a food chain will be formed and you may take more tokens. Please note: you may only collect a limited number of food!
You can also place a dinosaur or omnisaurus during your turn. You have different types of dinosaur and each one has a favourite area and meal. You must discard the amount of tokens shown and place the dino on at least one space in your park in the same colour as the dino. Omnisaurs eat anything and can be placed anywhere. Dinos and omnis score points at the end of the game depending on their location in your park. They score points based on the food icons depicted in neighbouring squares.
Dino Dino offers simple puzzle entertainment that is suitable for the whole family. The actions during a turn are easy to understand and explain and the scoring is also easy for even the youngest players to grasp. The funny artwork makes this a very suitable family game and leaves John Hammond jealous.
