Lost Ruins of Arnak
Review

Lost Ruins of Arnak (2020) is a collecting game where you explore an uninhabited ancient island. You play Action cards to find resources, defeat monsters and uncover treasures. It is a game about overcoming your limitations and fears in order to fully uncover the secrets and treasures that Arnak has to offer.

You play as a group of explorers, who find an uninhabited island covered in the ruins of an ancient civilisation. Each round you are dealt just six cards which limit your actions and force you into hard choices about how to progress. This results in a knife-edge struggle to eke out your measly resources as you work to discover new locations, defeat monsters, complete research and ultimately earn victory points.

Get this right and you can start to progress more quickly. Discovering new locations results in more treasure which enables you to buy cards for more actions per round. You can even unlock helpers who give you useful resources along the way. After five rounds, the person with the most victory points is the winner.

So what starts as a game of exploration, quickly becomes an exercise in resource management where you have to work with your limited team of archaeologists to maximise what they can uncover before the game is over.

Our examiner, Rob Prior, first checked Lost Ruins of Arnak 17 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 9 months ago.