Uwe Rosenberg’s Caverna is a masterpiece of Euro-style gaming. It should be, Uwe singlehandedly invented the genre in 2007 with Agricola. Then reinvigorated the genre he helped create with Caverna in 2013. Caverna is the apex of Uwe’s earlier masterpieces: Agricola, Le Havre and Ora et Labora. Though, because Caverna is only somewhat re-skinned from previous Uwe worker placement games, its not quite an unique take on Euro-style gaming. It’s a pattern with Uwe, once you’ve played his games, you are pretty familiar with his next game release before you even start. He never seems to cut ties with previous game mechanics and themes, though his evolutions in game design are usually an improvement. That being said, if you love Uwe Rosenberg designed games, then you’ll love Caverna.

The thing about Caverna is that it’s no less challenging than any of the other games that Uwe has developed. It’s deceptively nice and fun. Caverna is just as likely to cause you to break out into a cold sweat when trying to decide how to feed your family of Cave Dwarves. Do you plant crops for the upcoming harvest (Agricola), annex land to expand your properties (Ora et Labora), or dig out that new cave for a cuddle room to keep your sheep safe (Le Havre)? Caverna is forgiving in the sense that there are always options. So many options that another player passive aggressively getting in your way is annoying, but not as impactful as it might be in Agricola. The tension in the game is created because Caverna demands that you are efficient and focused on your plan for improving and developing your colony the way you want. And there are plenty of choices to do it with. There’s a lot of work for your family of dwarves to do, but not as much time as you quite need so that you can be unfocused about it. The amount of options are balanced by the need to get so much done.

The gameplay in Caverna is solid, and as you might expect, feels play tested to perfection. The rulebook is unambiguously specific and clear; including a bit of a tutorial that helps new players work through their first few games. The game mechanics are solid, but not terribly innovative. Mostly, mechanics are a series of refined and developed ‘worker placement and upgrade resource’ choices that are familiar in all of Uwe’s previous games. One innovation new to Uwe’s game design is the ability to send members of your clan on quests. Abstractedly moving gameplay off of players tableaux which serves mechanically as another way to obtain resources and improving your colony. Each strategy in the game is matched by an improvement in your colony that can help players improve their point total at the end of last round. So, developing your dwarven family into a clan of adventuring heroes can pay off, if you put into your colony a series of improvements that work together centered on that strategy. For example, adding an armory room to your cave system gives extra points for having adventuring dwarves. Just don’t forget that in Caverna being too specialized doesn’t pay off, as you are penalized for not developing the entire colony. Great, your clan of Dwarves are hearty adventurers . . what about those empty farm fields barren and without livestock? What are you going to feed your children with . . rocks? Heck yeah, there’s a room for feeding members of your clan rocks! Shut-up and eat your coal.

One design challenge in most euro-style games is that the end game can often be quite unsatisfying. Euro-style games are amazing at getting you to invest in gameplay. Developing your colony from scratch is an exciting challenge. However, as players really start to see their choices pay off, the game ends. Giving enough turns for players to develop their tableaux that they can now feed their workers while having a wider range of options when the game ends. Ending the game that way is quite unsatisfying. More often than not leading players into a kind of orgy like non-thematic point grabbing. (Think: Kirby in Scythe). Caverna is not immune to this design flaw. Just got your colony to sustain itself? Nice job . . . game over. One solution might be a campaign mode or having players place a series of colonies on a kind of world map and have a level of gameplay that involves colonial management would help make the game more exciting?

All in all, Caverna is a really fun game to play and absolutely it should be in your game collection. I just wouldn’t go out of my way to include any previous Uwe Rosenberg games in a collection. You don’t really need too, they are already in Caverna.