diggingfordinos
Unearth the Past, Piece by Piece!
Welcome to Digging for Dinos, where adventure, discovery, and competition collide! As a team of daring paleontologists, you’ll explore dig sites, unearth ancient fossils, and race against rival teams to assemble the most complete dinosaurs. Every move counts as you compete to claim the rarest finds and piece together prehistoric giants.
With simple yet strategic gameplay, Digging for Dinos is perfect for families, friends, and fossil fanatics of all ages. Grab your tools, out- dig the competition, and bring history to life—one fossil at a time!
Players control 2 paleontologists. Each turn they move one to a new dig site card, collecting the card from where they moved. Each card represents a section of a dinosaur fossil. Collect all the fossils needed to complete a specific dinosaur to score more points at the end of the game.
LB_NUMBER_OF_PLAYERS: 2 - 4
Game duration: 14 mn
Complexity: 2 / 5
Play diggingfordinos and 1280 other games online.
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Play diggingfordinos and 1280 other games online.
No download, directly from your web browser.
With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Rules summary
Goal
Collect fossil tiles and complete dinosaur skeletons to score the most points. The player with the highest score at the end of the game wins.
Turn Overview
- Players take turns clockwise. On your turn:
- Move one of your paleontologists
- Flip that paleontologist
- Collect the fossil tile you moved from
- Replace the tile with a new one from the current era
Movement
Move a Paleontologist
Choose one of your two paleontologists and move it in the direction shown on the token.
Each token has two sides:
- Orthogonal side – move up, down, left, or right
- Diagonal side – move diagonally
Movement Rules
- You must move in one of the directions shown on the token.
- You cannot land on a space occupied by another paleontologist.
- You may jump over any number of tokens to reach the next open tile in that direction.
- You cannot move off the board.
If no legal move is available, move one of your tokens to any open tile, ignoring movement rules.
Flip the Paleontologist
After moving, flip the paleontologist token to its other side.
This causes the paleontologist to alternate between:
- Orthogonal movement
- Diagonal movement
Collecting Fossils
After moving:
- Take the fossil tile you moved from and place it in front of you.
- Replace that tile with a new fossil tile from the current era stack.
If the current era stack is empty, begin drawing tiles from the next era.
Completing Dinosaurs
Fossil tiles belong to dinosaur sets.
Each tile shows:
- The dinosaur species
- Its position in the skeleton
- Two scoring values:
- - Left number – points if the dinosaur is incomplete
- - Right number – points if the dinosaur is completed
To complete a dinosaur, collect all tiles in its set.
Special Ability
Completing either of the following dinosaurs triggers an ability:
- Velociraptor
- Deinosuchus
When one of these dinosaurs is completed, the player may immediately flip one of their paleontologist tokens.
End Game
The game ends when either condition occurs:
- 1 - The final Era 3 fossil tile is placed on the board. or
- 2 - A player completes their fourth dinosaur.
All players finish the current round so everyone has taken the same number of turns. At the end of the round, players will collect the fossil tiles that their paleontologist tokens are currently on.
Scoring
Players score their fossil tiles as follows:
- Incomplete dinosaurs: score the left value on each fossil tile
- Completed dinosaurs: score the right value once for the entire set
Tiles in completed dinosaurs do not score individually.
Winning
The player with the most points wins.
Tiebreaker
If players are tied:
- Compare the largest scoring completed dinosaur
- If still tied, compare the next largest
- Continue until the tie is broken