Apex Theropod Deck-Building Game: Stomping Grounds Expansion Deck
Herschel Hoffmeyer; Die-Hard Games LLC-2016; 1-8; 45
Expansion kit for the Apex Theropod Deck-Building Game (above) includes 70 Cards and a card divider. Card types:

Bios: Megafauna
Philip Eklund; Sierra Madre Games-2011; 1-5
The third version of American Megafauna features considerable streamlining and simplification.

Bitin' Off Hedz
Cheapass Games-1996; 2-6
A simple race game that lets you use your own plastic dinosaurs for pieces. Dinosaurs can throw rocks at each other to knock the other guy back to Start, and they can accomplish the same thing by "Bitin' Off Hedz" (landing on the other fellow's square). You win by being the first to get to the volcano and throw yourself in! Play is usually short, but can become interminable if too many players get on board.

Burp
Harald Bilz, Peter Gudbrod, Rainer Kröhn; Heidelberger Spieleverlag-1992/Mayfair; 2-4
Players represent a stone age village struggling to climb the evolutionary ladder by discovering inventions.

Conquest of Pangea
Philip Orbanes; Winning Moves (USA)-2006; 2-4
Species advance, evolve and battle on the super-continent which re-shapes itself during play. Apparently there is a great deal of randomness...

Conquest of Pangea: Atlantis
Philip Orbanes (?) for Winning Moves (USA)-2006; 2-4
An expansion kit for the above game, it adds Atlantis as an additional continent plus a few other additions, as well as clarifying the rules to the main game.

Cretacea: The Game of Gargantuan Survival
Arthur Hannan; (unpublished)-2016; 2; 60
Rules for miniature combat intended for 1/100 scale.

Dino
Reinhold Wittig; Hexagames-1989/Fun Connection-1992; 2-6
The board is a 6x6 grid, on which a jungle valley is shown. Each player runs a science team, travelling to the past t: steal dinosaur eggs. Each player gets 2 play figures, then 6 nests are allocated to different playing fields with 5 dinosaurs to guard them. A meteorite is placed on a track which runs around the board. On his turn, a player may move a piece up to four fields. Unused points are used to advance the meteorite. Players must walk around squares containing dinosaurs. If it reaches an egg space, he may take it. The more eggs obtained, the greater the number of points. But take care to return to the present before the meteorite strikes, which ends the game. Positive points are awarded for eggs, negative ones for researchers still in the past.
Originally published Edition Perlhuhn as Iridium in 1988.

Dino Bash
Nigel Gross & Jon Sutherland; Symbiosis Publishing Ltd-1993; 3; 60
In a bar in an imagined world in which dinosaurs never died out, each player represents one of carnivores, herbivores or mammals. Each character features Wounds Points, Action Points, Combat Points, attack style and special abilities. They may employ various items in the bar to aid in the fight.

Dino Drache
Virginia Charves; Ravensburger-1993; 4
No other information available.

Dino Dunk
Cody Stevens; Twin City Games-2018; 2; 45
Dexterity game of dinosaur basketball using wooden disks. On a turn players flick either a dino or the ball to move, pass or shoot.

Dino-Duell
Jonathan Schouten and Paul Velleman; Ducosimo-1992; 2; 30
Each player begins with four dinosaurs in each of three types on the. back rows of a 6x7 board. A turn is moving horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Capture is possible only under very special arrangements of pieces on the board. Players seek to get four pieces adjacent to the central river.

DinoGenics
Richard Keene; (unpublished); 3-5; 120
Worker placement game of players competing to build and run dinosaur parks. They assign agents to compete over resources and then build facilities, populating them with dinosaurs. The best dinosaurs bring the most visitors, but if you haven't spent enough on the facilities they can escape and destroy parts of the park.

Dinoland
Andrea Angiolino, Fabrizio Casa, Luca Giuliano, Massimo Casa, Stefano Giusti and Marco Bardella; Clementoni-1993; 2-4
Each player leads an expedition to save dinosaurs, eggs, fossils and babies from a volcano-threatened island. Play is determined by a videotape with Professor Darmin on your screen as if it was at the spaceship window. The trick is that the professor's description matches the spaceship's current location so getting close to it will ensure success.

Dinomania
(unknown); (web-published)-2016; 2-5; 30
Dinosaur-themed card game of being the first to clear your hand (i.e. a shedding game).

Dinos, Dice and Dynamite
Andrew Hagen; (web-published)-2014; 1; 45
Press-your-luck and worker placement solitaire game of paleontogists in the Old West. You have a crew of workers to help discover new types of dinosaurs and defend them from others. Includes a deck of cards, six dice and a programmed opponent.

Die Dinos sind los
Wolfgang Riedesser; ASS-1993; 2-4
The cards show different dinosaurs and the board a jungle as well as nests with colored eggs (nest tiles). Each player gets nest tiles in his colour as well as the suitable dinosaur. All figures start at the volcano. The remaining nest tiles are shuffled and dealt to the individual nests on the playing field so that that nobody can see where the broken eggs are. Each player is dealt three cards. On his turn, each player plays a card and then moves his piece. Cards alow movement of the dinosaur or the players. The idea is to collect good eggs from nests and avoid empty nests and broken eggs. In English, the title is The Dinosaurs Are Loose.

Dinorennen
Friedemann Friese & Ilja Landsberg; unpublished (1992); 3-5; 45
Prototype in which each player has a racing dinosaur that moves and also fights via card play.

The Dinosaur Game: Survival or Extinction
Latz Chance Games-1995; 2-16
The board shows a long, serpentine track over which players move their pawns, propelled by die rolls. Each one represents a different type of dinosaur. Some spaces grant food tokens while others are perilous, e.g. natural disasters. In addition, it's possible, via cards, to be attacked by other dinosaurs. The winner reaches the final space while still having enough food remaining.

Dinosaur King
Sega/Upper Deck-2005; 2
Collectible card game set in the Cretaceous era based on the television series for children of the same name. The set of over 150 cards include Spinosaurus, Triceratops and, of course, T-Rex, which the players send into battle employing simple rules. The cards also include barcodes so that players can scan them into their game consoles. Cards include background information, strength, type, element, technique and critical hit type.

Dinosaur Wars
(unknown); The Game Crafter-2015; 2-4; 150
Players represent fossil hunters in the Badlands during the late 1800's. They set up by choosing crew and equipment and then try to find bones in complete sets and return them to a museum for money to use for further expeditions. Rustlers, claim jumpers and calamities ar challenges to overcome. Employs a modular board and roll-and-move.

Dinosaurs of Catan
Rick Heli; PnP-2001; 3-4
A variant for the popular game Die Siedler von Catan / The Settlers of Catan
[rules]

Dominant Species
Chad Jensen; GMT-2010; 2-6
Worker placement and area control game beginning 90,000 BC just as an ice age begins. The possible powers are mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid and insect. Lasts about 3 hours.

Dragon War: Jurassic Valley Set
Robert A. Kraus; RAK Graphics-1999; 2-6; 45
Dinosaur-themed expansion to the Dragon War fantasy game.

Escape from Dinosaur Island!
Ron Shirtz; Fractal Dimensions-1998; 1
Solitaire game of World War 2 marines battling a variety of dinosaurs and other megafauna such as sabertooths on a Pacific Island.

Escape from 100 Million BC
Kevin Wilson; IDW Games/Pandasaurus Games-2016; 1-6; 60
Cooperative game in which players are stranded time travelers who must reassemble their ship before the eruption of a nearby volcano. Other challenges are roaming dinosaurs, time rifts to close and historical figures to round up. Each player has unique abilities.

Evo
Philippe Keyaerts; Eurogames/Descartes-2001; 3-5
Your aim is to develop a new species of dinosaur including features such as weather, land (3 levels from sea level (warmer) to high mountains (colder), other players' dinosaurs, movement points, attacks and an auction system allows you to buy new genes (horn, fur, leg, etc.) in order to evolve your dinosaurs. The prototype was the winner of the Sim D'Or 99. [Review: Haag]

Evolution
David Wells; Ariel/Fantasy Games Unlimited-1976; 2
This is played in rounds divided into three phases: Growth, Movement and Attack. Players begin by placing one piece on any intersection. Then in Growth, new pieces are placed for the existing ones, but not adjacent to any other pieces. The maximum size of a group is five pieces. After all growth is complete, Movement begins. Only groups of two or more pieces may move and moving has several other rules. Following this are Attacks. Each piece bordering an opposing piece may attack, calculating its strength from its neighboring pieces of the same color. The weaker piece is removed. Only one piece may attack in a round. At the end, for each occupied intersection a player receives one point. Also known as Guerilla.

The Evolution Game
Simon Boswell & Phillip Lewis (Finland)-1997; 2-4
Simulates competition for territory with other species, changing environmental conditions, plagues, starvation, natural disasters, global catastrophes, mutation, ecological niches and the geological sequence from the Precambrian to the Pleistocene on an abstract board.

Evolution Earth: Cataclysm
Tomi Rantala & Jaana Hintsanen; Mindwarrior-2009/Tactic-2009; 2-4
Deck-building card game in which players build the continents of the world and then try to conquer them with their evolving species.

Evolution in the Box
Jirí Mikolá; Jirasgames-2009; 2-5
Players begin play representing a forerunner of modern man, trying to find meat and evolve his brain, which helps hunting skills. Command cards are used to decide where the player's tribe will move and whether they will be able to hunt any mammoths.

Explorers of the Lost Valley
Enrique Dueñas González; Gen-X Games-2016; 2-4; 25
Press-your-luck dice and card game of African explorers who discover live dinosaurs and try to capture as many as possible. On a turn reveal two dinosaur cards. Try to capture one by rolling dice higher than their difficulty.

Extinction
Gary Sinauer; Sinauer Associates-1968?/1970/1971/Carolina Biological Supply Company-1978
An educational product. There were rules for several games, but only the main one seems to have any interest. Players represent a species on an island and have genes, reproductive rate, prey attack and defense, habitat, mobility, etc. Players can change their "genes" during play, with players eliminated by competition, being preyed upon, or over-population. The 1978 edition changed the reproductive attribute cards from a fixed litter size to a multiple of the number of creatures in an area. [more]

Fossil Hunters
Kevin Lanzing; Clockwork Colossus Games/The Game Crafter-2015; 2-5; 30
Area encirclement game. Players use wooden sticks to divide the board and establish their claims. They then try to finish their claims before time runs out.

Giganten
unknown; Carlit-1992; 2
Differently-equipped dinosaurs battle on a checkerboard à la Chess or Stratego.

Great Dinosaur Hunt
Ronald Keippel; self-1993; 2-4
Trivia game said to last thirty minutes.

Great Dinosaur Rush
Scott Almes; APE Games-2015; 2-5; 60
Game of collecting sets of fossils. Each turn has two phases: dig and build (assemble the fossils into a complete dinosaur). Players may engage in take-that actions to gain Notoriety, but if at the end they have the most Notoriety, they lose points.

In a World of Dinosaurs
Pete Betcher; (self-published)-(forthcoming)2015; 2-4; 45
In this two board game reminiscent of Khronos, players move dinosaurs as they try to stay alive amid meteors, landslides, tar pits, hungers, etc. When they die their fossils appear on the second, modern board, where players try to excavate them in a a set collection sub-game.

Mesozoic Tales
Tito Aureliano; The Game Crafter-2013/Colecionadores de Ossos-2013; 2-6; 90
Players try to restore order after dinosaurs escape from a zoo on a remote island. Directed by mission cards, they must fight to survive and reactivate the power grid, all the time limited to carrying at most three items at a time, which can include vehicles, guns, medical packs and so on. Or they may play a dinosaur. Which applies depends on a die roll each at the start of each turn. If a dinosaur, it may be an herbivore or a carnivore. Dinosaurs are used to hamper the activities of the fellow players.

Pangaea: The Evolution Game
Pyramid Games (UK)-1986; 2-6
The game object is to evolve from a lungfish into modern man. A set of event cards allow moving predators, evolving predators, and shifting continents. Somewhat high on the luck factor. A little like American Megafauna stripped very far down. Also known as Evolution.

Pirates vs. Dinosaurs
Richard Launius; Jolly Roger Games-2010; 2-5; 90
Players control pirate ships whose crews have partial knowledge of a treasure buried on some Pacific island which just happens to be filled with leftover dinosaurs, and also is sinking. At the start players get to outfit their ships with crew, weapons and other equipment. One of their tasks will be to find other pieces of their maps so that they can definitively locate the treasure. Hostile dinosaurs appear in the form of cards played by others. The treasure is dug up by pulling pieces from a bag; deciding how long to keep doing this before getting back to the ship in safety is a matter of pushing one's luck. [Pirate Games]

Prehistoric War P.I.G.s
Chris Clark; Inner City Game Designs-2005; 2
A P.I.G. is a plastic infantry guy and this is a miniatures war game of plastic dinosaurs and cave men (why do some think they are co-evals?) fight.

Reptile Island
Brett Christensen; web-published-2010; 1-5
Cooperative game of Victorian-era explorers trying to escape an island inhabited by two dimetrodons.

Die Schlacht der Dinosaurier
Roger Ford; Schmidt-1993
Battling dinosaur armies.

Sir Harry and the Dinosaurs
Roger Webb; SFSFW-2003; 1-
A set of miniatures rules for dinosaur hunting in the year 1878 where dinosaurs are living in the jungles of India. The player tries to capture as many dinosaurs as possible in a fixed amount of time. First published in the magazine Ragnarok, issue 39.

T-Rex
Hanno & Wilfried Kuhn; Hans im Glück-1999/ Rio Grande Games-1999; 3-5
The theme sounds just like that of Dino: each player runs a science team, travelling to the past to steal dinosaur eggs, taking care to return to the present before meteorites strike the earth, which ends the game. On each turn, the players choose to play high cards to collect eggs or low cards to be able to direct future collecting efforts. The winner will be the player who collects the most points in dinosaur eggs in the 12 rounds of the game. A mix of trick-taking, card counting and bluff.

Tetrazoic
Teel McClanahan, III; Modern Evil Press-2014; 2-6; 60
Deck-building game of post-nuclear war genetically-engineered monsters Cards are monster parts that players use create mutations.

Trias
Ralf Lehmkuhl; Gecko Games-2002; 2-5
"Trias" is German for "Triassic". Each player steers the fortunes of his dinosaur herds as they peacefully coexist on the splintering continent of Pangaea. The winner is the player who manages to dominate the most of the new continents before the meteor strikes.

Triassic Terror
Peter Hawes; Eagle Games-2012; 2-6; 120
Players establish and grow herds, which migrate across the four environments, competing for the best habitats. Beware dangers such as t-Rex, velociraptors, pterodactyls and volcanoes.

Triassic Terror: Promo Pack
Peter Hawes; Eagle Games-2013; 2-6; 90
Adds two predator tiles and a pterodactyl (to use as the first player token).

Tyranno Ex
Karl-Heinz Schmiel; Moskito-1990/Avalon Hill; 2-4
A memory-based game of somewhat abstract evolution. [Review: Game Cabinet]

Tyrannasaurus Wrecks
Glen Frank; Fantasy Games Unlimited-1985; 2-4
Folio game about time travellers hunting dinosaurs and trying to avoid getting chomped. Includes two cardstock pages of reference tables, cardstock hunter record sheet and dinosaur record sheet, 17" by 11" cardstock hex map (the actual playable area of the map is 9.5" by 10"; the rest of the map contains a turn track and reference charts/tables), and 141 cut apart counters.

Uchronia
Carl Chydyk; IELLO-2011; 3-5
Card management game set in an alternate universe where dinosaurs and major civilizations exist side by side. Players vie to construct 7 buildings and gain influence and reputation points.

Supposed to be forthcoming in June.

Urland
Frank Nestel; Doris & Frank-2001; 3-5
A successor to Primordial Soup in theme only, probably one of the greatest successes from Essen 2001. Perhaps in response to complaints that every Primordial Soup turn was more or less the same, now one has at least three or four different types of turns. There is the turn in which one chooses the island of competition, after that the turn one spends only planning, after that the turn in which one goes last and has a very good chance of knowing what the land of competition will be and finally the neutral turn. As in the predecessor there are still gene cards which permit players to "break" the normal rules, but now the game is one of regional dominance rather than of feeding. In addition, in deciding to breed more fish (which will later walk onto land), one usually helps other players as well as oneself. There seem to be curiously few gene cards, but there is already precedent for an expansion kit. What many players may not realize and what designers will most admire is just how clean all the rules have been kept, how just by details like the clever ordering of the phases, the handling of the scoring track, etc., many extra and niggly rules, e.g. what to do about ties, have been very neatly avoided. Recommended for all strategists.

Urland Expansion
Frank Nestel; Doris & Frank-2003; 3-5
Adds 10 new gene cards.

Velociraptor
J. R. Blackwell, Major Johnson, Bri Lance, Daniel Solis, Jesse Whitworth & Andrew Wilson; Board Raptor Games-2012; 3-6; 60
In this card game players represent young velociraptors that seek prey, mutate and try to survive the environment. It is also possible to cannibalistically attack opponents.

Some game enthusiasts may want to plan a special chili and board game night. Participants could each bring a different type of chili, from the most common Chuck's chili recipes to unique Dinosaur BBQ chili recipes.

• American Beginnings: The Prehistory and Palaeoecology of Beringia by Frederick Hadleigh West (Editor), 1999
• Atlas of the Prehistoric World by Douglas Palmer, 1999
• The Complete Dinosaur by James O. Farlow (Editor), M. K. Brett-Surman (Editor), 1998 [O]
• The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals by Simon Conway Morris, 1998
• Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World by Jonathan and Cynthia Lunine, 1997 [MV 573.2]
• Dinosaur Data Book: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Reptiles by David Lambert and David Suriano, 1997
• Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs by Kevin Padian and Philip J. Currie, 1997
• The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples by Tim Flannery, 2001
• The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs by David E. Fastovsky, David B. Weishampel, 1996
• Flying Dinosaurs by Philip J. Currie (Jan Sovak, Illustrator), 1992 [O]
• Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth by Richard Fortey, 1998
• The Penguin Historical Atlas of Dinosaurs by Michael J. Benton, 1997 [MV 567.9022B]
• Rex Appeal: The Amazing Story of Sue, the Dinosaur That Changed Science, the Law, and My Life by Peter Larson, Kristin Donnan and Robert Bakker, 2002
• The Structure of Evolutionary Theory by Stephen Jay Gould, 2002

• Als Deutschland am Äquator lag. Eine Reise in die Urgeschichte. von Volker Arzt, 2001
• Der grosse Atlas der Urgeschichte. von Douglas Palmer, 2001
• Leben in der Urzeit. Von den Dinosauriern bis zu den ersten Menschen. von Z.V. Spinar, 1976
• Lexikon der Vorzeit von Rodney Steel und Anthony P. Harvey, 1981
• Ursprünge des Lebens von David Norman, 1994
• Warum Elefanten große Ohren haben. Dem genialen Bauplan der Tiere auf der Spur. von Chris Lavers, 2001

• More Bibliography
• Understanding Evolution
• If you liked this Ludography, you may also enjoy traveling forward in time to the SILK ROAD.

Spotlight on Games > Ludographies