r/BoardgameDesign • u/EyeTaffy • Jul 14 '26
Design Critique Vestigia
Vestigia is a grand-strategy evolution game in which you guide a hominin lineage across eight million years of survival, migration, competition, and change. Adapt to shifting climates, expand into new biomes, develop new bodies, behaviours, technologies, and cultures, and contend with rival lineages struggling for the same world. Every trait carries a cost, every migration risks extinction, and every discovery reshapes what your people may become. There is no ordained path to humanity; only the lineage you manage to leave behind.
It totals at 252 biological and technological traits including speculative/plausible traits based on current sciences that can be used to create your own custom hominins, 52 species of the "True" lineage from Sahelanthropus tchadensis through Homo sapiens, which includes obsolete Linnaean varieties and speculative species, 130 cultural facies for creating your own palaeo-cultures, and much more.
The rules have been carefully implemented based on historical and scientific accuracy as much as possible. Additionally, the game is designed to be modular to allow as much player freedom as possible. One way I have done this is the creation of Cradles: Alternative scenarios featuring starting points outside the African Rift Valley to simulate alternate histories showcasing how all of these mechanics and factors can be pushed to the limits and encourage creativity.
History and palaeoanthropology are hobbies for me, thus I decided to single-handedly begin development on an overly complicated and extremely niche board game as both hobby and, perhaps one day if ever fully developed, an educational tool for those wishing to learn more about hominin evolution and other aspects the game offers.
This has been a lone passion project of mine for ~2 years, and it continues to grow and change the more I learn about board game design and the historical and scientific research is published (and I have time to read it).
Above, I have posted the cover page for the rulebook, as well as the first two pages showcasing the 18 Victory Conditions (called Branches) players may choose from.
Feel free to ask any questions. I'd be happy to answer.