- Publisher : Pixie Games
- Designer : Shem Phillips
- Artist(s) : Sam Phillips
- Players : 2–4
- Playing time : 45–60 Min
- Weight BGG : 2.71
What's this?
Skara Brae is a resource management and worker placement game by Shem Phillips, in which players take on the roles of inhabitants of a Neolithic village on the Orkney Islands, in Scotland. Their goal: to develop their community by feeding, housing, and equipping their settlers while intelligently managing their resources… and their waste.
How do you play?
🔄 Structure of a game
A game is played in 4 rounds , each consisting of:
- 3 turns per player
- then an end-of-round phase
▶️ How a lap unfolds
In turn, a player must:
1. Choose a Village card
There are several types:
- Colonists : produce resources according to their environment
- Roofs : protect the colonists (less food needed)
- Items : provide bonuses and points
👉 The colonists trigger:
- a mandatory harvest (depending on their type)
- an optional bonus effect
2. Place your workers
Players use their workers to activate actions:
- Furniture : improve your score per colonist
- Cooking : transforming resources into food
- Craft : improving your actions
- Clean : remove waste
- Trade : exchanging resources
- Harvesting : Harvest according to the zones
3. Retrieve your workers
All workers are collected at the end of the turn to be reused later.
🍂 End of round
Each player must:
- Resolve certain effects
- Feeding its settlers
- Produce waste
👉 Waste is a key element:
- it clutters the storage
- it makes you lose points
🏁 End of game
After 4 rounds, the points are tallied:
- Furniture Track (settler value)
- Trade Track
- Improved actions
- Maps (Roofs, objects…)
- Remaining resources
- ❌ Penalties: waste + poorly managed storage
👉 The player with the most points wins.
Is it good?
Skara Brae is a pure resource management game, but with an original twist: a waste-related storage mechanic. The more resources you accumulate, the more waste you generate… and that’s both brilliant and punishing. You constantly want to stockpile resources to progress on the various scoring tracks or upgrade your tiles, but each step towards abundance brings you closer to a mountain of waste that pollutes the end of the round and inflicts penalties at the end of the game.
Another interesting mechanic lies in managing the timing of the turn order: knowing when to pass to choose your cards first in subsequent turns adds a real strategic touch that should not be overlooked.
The worker placement system remains classic, but it is effective thanks to a gradual increase in power, round after round, with the addition of new workers.
The material is of very good quality, with many varied wooden resources and immediately recognizable illustrations, signed Sam Phillips.
One criticism of the game is a certain lack of interaction: despite the struggle for turn order, each player primarily focuses on optimizing their strategy in isolation. The game also requires an initial learning curve to fully grasp the icons and their effects. Finally, it relies heavily on resource trading and a highly strategic aspect, which may displease those who dislike spending their time converting resources.
Ultimately, Skara Brae remains an enjoyable and clever game thanks to its waste mechanic, which rewards planning, optimization, and meticulous resource management. Combining card drafting and fairly standard worker placement, it’s recommended for those who enjoy challenging logistical puzzles and precise optimization.
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Skara Brae review
Positives
- Original and very successful waste management mechanism
- Interesting timing management (turn order)
- Gradual and satisfactory increase in power
- Effective single-player mode
Negatives
- Interaction was quite limited
- A very strategic game
- Many resource conversions
- A fairly classic game
