Darwin's Journey

Darwin's Journey is set up by placing the large central board with diary action pages, museum specimen spaces, and the Beagle movement track. Each player receives a personal board, starting crew cards that dictate initial colored seals, a specific set of worker pawns, tents, and exploration meeples. Explorers start on the first island, and the Beagle starts at the beginning of the track. Objective tiles, temporary tokens, and special action tiles are randomly distributed to ensure high variability between games.

The main objective is to guide Charles Darwin's historical journey by exploring the Galapagos islands, discovering diverse animal and plant specimens, writing correspondence, and publishing scientific theories. Over five rounds, players compete to accumulate the most victory points by balancing board progression, museum deliveries, and fulfilling personal and public objectives.

On a player's turn, they place one of their worker pawns onto an available action space on the central board's diaries. Each worker requires specific colored seals unlocked on their player board to access certain spaces. If another player's worker is already present, a coin fee must be paid to the bank. Actions allow players to move explorers, collect and deliver specimens to the museum, gain new crew cards, build tents for area majority scoring, and advance scientific knowledge.

Scoring happens throughout the game and during end-game phases. Players score points by achieving majority in envelope categories at round ends, delivering rare specimens to museum rows and columns, advancing the HMS Beagle track, and fulfilling objective cards. The core engine relies on the Theory of Evolution track, where completed rows multiplied by accumulated book symbols grant substantial end-game points.

The game concludes automatically at the end of the fifth round. After the final round's reward and cleanup phase, players calculate their ultimate scores by combining all points from the theory of evolution track, completed objective tiles, camp placement bonuses, and remaining game assets. The player with the highest total wins.