Indio is a Euro-style board game for 2-4 players age 14 and up. It takes 60-90 minutes to play, during which you’ll be using workers to collect resources, upgrade the production of the land, and build structures. Your goal is to have the most influence (victory points) and be crowned the ruler of Indio!
What’s in the Box
Indio has over 400 parts and pieces! It begins with colorful oversize hexagonal tiles that you’ll shuffle to create a random game board. This means every game is unique, and you’ll need to adapt to the geography of the land.
Each player has a set of workers and structures. For our colorblind friends, we’ve ensured they’re easy to distinguish: we don’t use traditional red, green, or blue player pieces.
You’ll love the high-quality shaped wooden resource pieces. Each represents something produced by the land or crafted by your workers. Again, we’ve thought about players who struggle with colors and made sure the shapes and iconography are easy to tell apart.
Finally, there are decks of goal cards to guide the work you do and add to your victory at game’s end.
How to Play
After you’ve set up the “hexes” to form the board, you’ll start your empire by placing a farm, an outpost, and some workers. The game is divided into seven years (rounds), and each year has five phases:
Quests
Quest cards provide goals you can accomplish during your turn. They help guide the work you do, and earn influence at the end of the game. There are also Leader cards, which have secret end-game goals unique to each player. Accomplish them for still more influence!
Production
During the Production phase, you’ll add resources to the hexes on the board. These resources are based on the type of land, and the number of workers or structures on each hex.
Crafting
Crafting is your opportunity to choose what each of your structures produces. Maybe you need some food, or more workers, or some other resources to help build more things. Every year you’ll need to decide how to best create and use these resources and workers.
Harvest
The Harvest is a phase where you feed your workers and get them ready to take action. If you don’t have enough food, you won’t be able to use your workers’ full potential.
Actions
Most of your turn will be spent in the Action phase, where you’ll use your workers to move, collect resources, improve the land, build structures, and even attack other workers. Your actions are limited, and the resources are scattered around the map, so you’ll need to plan carefully!
Glorious victory
After seven years, the game ends. Tally your influence by counting your structures, lands, workers, and resources. Consider the Quests you’ve accomplished, and whether your Leader was successful. The player with the most influence is the new ruler of Indio!
Over the course of the game, everyone will be working to gather resources, build structures, conquer territory, complete quests, and outmaneuver their opponents. There isn’t much downtime, whether you’re performing your actions or planning your next turn.
Included with the game are player aids that will remind you of what you can do, how much everything costs, and how you’ll earn influence at the end. And a full-color rulebook filled with diagrams and examples helps you quickly learn the game.
For a full description of how to play, you can read the rulebook.
Once you’ve played a few games of Indio, you’ll be ready for a new challenge with the Renaissance expansion…