
The big initial draw of this game is the boulder. Feeling claustrophobic yet? Temple Looting Fun or “Hopefully, I’ll Be Crushed By a Boulder”? In the case of a tie, the adventurer who holds the Stone of Chac is the winner. Treasure cards and chests award victory points. The winner is the player who gets out of the temple alive with the most treasure points. Play proceeds through these rounds until either: Some/all players are safely out of the temple with their treasures, the boulder has sealed off the exit and trapped some players inside, or all adventurers are dead.

This simulates the boulder picking up speed as it rolls along. So in round one, one die is rolled, two dice are rolled in round two and so on until round five when all five dice are rolled. To move the boulder, the Dice Keeper rolls a number of dice equal to the game round. The walls are moved by drawing three cards from the walls deck and applying their effects immediately. Generally, each action costs one action point and can be divided up however the player chooses. Other actions such as searching, opening alcoves, deciphering glyphs, and bridge sabotage are available in the various rooms of the temple. Moving one space is the one action that is available in every area of the temple. The Dice Keeper rolls all five dice and each player gets one action for every die that is greater than or equal to their LL. The heavier your LL, the less you can do. The lighter your LL, the more you can do. The LL simulates the extra weight that an explorer would have if he was trekking through a temple with a load of loot on his back. If your LL is too high, you can discard any of your treasure cards to lighten the load, but at the price of a reduced treasure count at the end of the game. Each player inventories all of their treasure cards and each one counts as a load point. This is the genius mechanic of this game.

The game is played over an unspecified number of rounds and each round consists of six actions, summarized below. You can’t let your greed get the best of you.

You’re trying get more treasure/points than the other players, but you must also escape the temple alive in order to win.

You’ll be dodging the rolling boulder, navigating treacherous lava rooms and raging rivers, and avoiding moving walls, all from the safety of your own game room. The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac is a temple-looting, mayhem-fleeing board game that puts you in the role of an Adventurer trying to get as much treasure as you can and get out alive. Why did it have to be snakes?”) While most of us have no real-life desire to run from boulders that want to crush us, you can have that “Indy experience” in board game form. Whenever you hear the iconic theme song from Indiana Jones, you probably think of Indy running down the corridor, fleeing that boulder.
