Tomb of the Ancients is a simple board game about adventures in archaeology. Players will buy maps at the marketplace, and use those maps to find artifacts in the shifting desert sands.

This is an early beta of Tomb of the Ancients. Please check back often for updates to the rules and components.

• Game Board (V 2.11, 6/11/23)

• Game Cards (V 2.15 11/28/23) - all that has changed in this version is the Market Cards, below

• Game Rules (V 2.16, 3/20/24)

• Play Tomb of the Ancients in Tabletop Simulator (V 2.11, 7/1/23)

Summary: You and your opponents are archaeologists, hunting for lost treasures of the ancient world. On each turn you may visit either the market, where you can buy maps and sell artifacts, or the desert, where you can use your maps to find artifacts.

Map cards are somple puzzle patterns that you can find in the “shifting sands,” a 5x5 grid of black and white tokens. When you find an artifact it flips over the tokens in the pattern, and this can lead to more discoveries for you and the other players!

Tomb of the Ancients is a nice little puzzle game with a simple economy and straightforward game mechanics. Try it out and let us know what you think!

Version Notes:

In the 2.15 build we have updated the design of the Market cards (with big prices now in dollars) and changed the number of cards to remove from the deck for different player counts. Also there’s a note to pay attention to any first-player advantage that the game might have, and think on whether we should be giving every player the same number of turns. We still lean towards “no.”