One might expect that when a game is designed by Reiner Knizia, is published by Goldsieber (with an English edition by Rio Grande) and comes in a large box proclaiming it to be "Fr abenteuerlustige Erwachsene, aber auch fr Familien mit Kindern ab 10 Jahren" (for adventure loving adults but also for families with children age 10+) that this would be the latest in the long string of strategy games that Reiner has treated us to over the past few years. But one would be wrong, for this is not a gamers' game at all and I doubt that its designer intended it to be. It is a light family game. A very light family game, and if your children need to be 10 or over before they can play it, it is time that you started feeding them more fish.

The theme is the 19th century exploration of Africa by Europeans and the board shows a map of the continent, overlaid with a grid of 101 hexagons. Five of these are 'starting cities' and each of the others begins the game containing a face-down marker, the obverse sides of which depict gold, gems, nomads, monuments and a variety of animals and artefacts. Each player is represented on the map by an explorer who moves around turning over tokens. This is the exploring part. The tokens bring in points in various simple ways and the player with the most points at the end is the winner.

On your turn you may either relocate your explorer to another part of the continent or do two "move and take an action" combinations. Your almost invariable choice will be the second of these. Explorers may move only to spaces that are either empty or already explored, with the latter meaning that they contain either a base camp or a token that has been turned face up. In each part of a normal turn an explorer may move up to two spaces.

The actions that accompany movement are taken from a menu of five. The first option is to turn over a marker. What happens next depends on the type of marker it happens to be. If it is an artefact, you remove it from the board and it will score points for you at the end of the game. How many will depend on how many matching items you manage to accumulate. A "forced exchange" mechanism enables you to build up sets. If it is a 'mineral resources' marker (gold or precious stones), you leave it where it is and score points immediately (1 or 2, depending on how many symbols are shown on the marker). If it is a monument, you also leave it where it is, but this time you don't score any points. Instead, you are given an extra 'base camp'. This is actually quite good, as base camps have important scoring potential, which I'll come back to later.

That leaves animals and nomads. These score instant points and stay on the map, but not necessarily in the space where they were discovered. Animals like to be with others of the same species: so the scoring is 1 for the animal itself plus 1 for each adjacent animal of the same type. You can either leave the marker where it was or, if there is an empty space elsewhere on the board where it would be worth more points, you can place it there instead. The options with nomads are similar, except that they score for adjacent empty spaces rather than other nomads.

Items 2 and 3 on the menu are "move an animal" and "move a nomad". In both cases, if you are adjacent to an animal or nomad and if there is an empty space elsewhere on the board where it would be worth more, you may move it there and take the difference in points.

The last two alternatives involve the establishment of a base camp. Everyone begins with two of these and, as already noted, you gain more through the discovery of monuments. An explorer can establish a base camp in the space where he stands, provided he is the only piece or marker there and provided the player has a spare base camp available in their store. The establishment can be either for mining or for viewing the sights. If the former, the player picks up all face-up gold or precious stone markers that are adjacent to the site of the camp. At the end of the game there are bonuses for the players lying first and second in the 'most gold' and 'most gems' stakes. The other base camps, the touristy ones, score their points immediately -- 1 for each animal, nomad or monument adjacent to the camp.

The game ends when all the monuments have been discovered.

The things that distinguish a gamers' game from a family one are the amount of meaningful decision making that is required of players and the scope for competitive behaviour. This game is almost, not quite but almost, devoid of both. The exploration part is pretty random, which is fair enough in terms of the theme. Part of the appeal of exploration is that you don't know what you are going to discover. However, that is real exploration; this is just turning over tokens, an activity with much less of a "Gosh!" factor. Deciding where to place animal and nomad tokens in order to score most points is trivial and so too is how to deal with your artefact tokens in order to build sets. This last also comes under the heading of 'non-competitive', since, like the corresponding subsystem in Tikal, the exchanges, though ones that your trading partners can't refuse, are also ones that don't damage their scores. They boost yours but don't penalise theirs. That just leaves base camps to provide scope for anything remotely 'gamerish'. Deciding where best to put these calls for a small amount of judgement and sometimes there will be an opportunity to spike an opponent's plans in this regard by moving an animal or nomad to a space which they hoped to use as a site.

Africa is enticingly themed, attractively presented and a pleasant enough way of passing the time. As a game, it is suitable for playing with the kids or with non-gamer friends and relatives. However, if you are looking for a new strategy game to play with fellow gamers, this isn't it.