This is Uwe Rosenberg taking his landmark worker placement masterpiece Agricola and trying to soften the hard edges - to make the dour, day-to-day struggle for survival in 14th century agrarian Europe into the happy-go-lucky cave spelunking adventure, with cute little gnomes that can reach into this reimplemented Agricola to find any way possible out of a turn where you were denied what you wanted by another player. Agricola has endgame conditions that are unyielding and demand the same from all players regardless if the system can provide - this game has similar endgame conditions... but about a thousand rooms you can build to fudge away from the requirements.I am a huge fan of Agricola - the more I play it, the more I see it as a game of unmatched genius doing what most board games try and fail to do, a perfect blend of strategy and tactics, elegant while remaining incredibly variable with the shift of only a few starting cards. It is simple yet miles deep. Caverna is mostly a response to people who like elements of Agricola, but not how... terrifyingly tense it can be, or how it forces conflict on literally every turn. Or at least, that's largely how Caverna was presented to me, which is why I never really wanted to play Caverna. I owned this game for five years because I had an Agricola copy that did not have sculpted animal or vegetable/grain tokens - the price of buying them was the price of buying Caverna which had them, so the choice to buy was obvious. But... I did finally get a chance to play, and...For its reputation as a friendlier Agricola, the game is still tense. It actually does something that Agricola doesn't, by having harvests occur on nearly every round after a certain point The game spits out way more food resources than Agricola, no more lonely trips to the day laborer spot for two food, plowing and sewing a field is down to one readily-available action rather than a dreadful series of telegraphed steps that can get interrupted by your jerk competitors after any turn, but there is incentive to hold on to your resources rather than eat them - you're not just eating food, you're eating points. The terror of begging cards is mostly a phantom, but points are still points.I liked the flexibility at times, and at times I didn't. Agricola is a hard rebar stick you try to bend and it never quite does, whereas Caverna is a flexible shoot you can flex according to your needs at any given moment. It is a far more tactical game than Agricola, which tends to start as strategy, become tactics, sometimes then disaster management, and then if you're good back to sound strategy again. Sometimes I like this flexibility. For example, in Agricola your children are points as they are, whereas in Caverna the points are tied to the bedroom you build for them - you can get a cheap bedroom just to get them into the world, but no points for the room, or you can get a very nice room for them for added victory points, or even a room that accommodates two of them. There is more to think about, and if you do not get the room you want, hey there are other rooms - it is not like in Agricola with its limited build a room actions, where it can forestall your plans for kids for an entire round.... unfortunately though this is superficially more friendly, it also makes the game way more complicated to think about. You feel less of a sting from a player reading your strategy and taking an action before you could, but you also feel less triumph from an accurate read of another player's intentions because they can easily recalibrate to something less optimal but still good. Sometimes even better than the original plan they had. Ultimately, this style of play does rob me of the central joy of Agricola for me - the passions it arouses, even in the people who can't stand it. Caverna tends to play out more dispassionately and less urgently, and is prone to analysis paralysis too because of its vast amount of options. A simple beginner's board is available to limit the options, but then again, Agricola has that, too. It also, in my opinion, does not scale down as well as Agricola - Caverna with two is just too overwhelming a set-up for what you get, whereas Agricola in its elegance gets right out there quickly.But then again, because I love Uwe Rosenberg and there is still a weird slippery tension in this, I like Caverna. It is a fun puzzle to sort out and sometimes I do not need to play a game where I can land a killing blow. It is no Agricola, but no game really is.Caverna is not for everyone, but it's pretty close. It's a big box game, meaning it has a LOT of components, and for people who aren't already into board games, it might be a bit overwhelming. It's not actually that hard to learn, but it's more complicated than, say, Kingdomino.At the core, it's a worker placement game like Raiders of the North Sea, with nods to Kingdomino and even Castles of Mad King Ludwig. To me it's the quintessential worker placement game. Agricola has a lot of the same mechanics but is more punishing. This is a better experience for more players, or for those newer to board games and who might be reluctant to learn something that looks so vast. And it is vast.The complexity comes mainly in the form of 1) how many actions you have to choose from, and 2) how many different rooms you can build. Once you learn the basic game flow, the rest will start making sense the more you play. Caverna is a game where the strategy runs pretty deep. You will continue to notice new things every time you play.As I said in the title of this review: if you need help picking your "big box game," let me help you out: pick Caverna. If your group of friends is a more hardcore gamer group that plays many different games, you might want to go for Agricola instead. If you're not sure, just get this one. For the same price as Settlers of Catan, you get a lot more. Much wider support for number of players, expandable boards, tons of components, and even a solo play mode. The components are well made and satisfying to use.I really can't think of anything negative here. It does take some learning, but not much compared to other big box games. As a gift it is probably best to consider smaller or less expensive games. I would want to know the person I was gifting it to was a super board game geek before buying this for them - but then, if they were a super board game geek, they'd probably already own it. So the gifting value is a bit limited.This game gives you options. I mean, lots and lots of options. There are so many diverse strategies I'm not even sure I could narrow them down. That's a good thing and a bad thing. If you are a hardcore gamer and spend a lot of time playing this over and over, you will probably enjoy this aspect of the game. For someone who doesn't get the chance to play as often (or who has lots of other games to cycle through) this game has a bit of option shock. The breadth of it seems too large, considering its length. The game actually ends pretty quickly and many strategies may not have time to come to fruition. It's fun and everything, but flexible enough that it's hard to get a handle on. It also took an unusually long time to learn all the rules. And after we had been though the rule book, there were still a number of things that are unclear. We own and play a large number of games and this was probably the most painful to get started with.Of course, the complexity and flexibility has an upside too...you just don't get that upside until you have played it many times.The components are excellent quality and there are LOTS of them. In part this is because the design of the game is such that you need more components and boards for larger groups. If you are playing with 2 or 3, you will end up leaving most of it in the box. By the way, the box is super heavy because of these components, and they just BARELY fit back in. Most of the time gaming companies leave too much empty space in the box in order to make the game seem larger on the shelf. This game uses an uncomfortably small and flimsy box to make itself seem more manageable.I am a huge fan of Agricola which is precursor to this board game. Having left my copy to my home country I was looking for a similar experience but did not want to buy the same thing twice. Therefore, I felt that Caverna would be a safe bet and I was right. It is a deeply strategic board game with numerous ways to victory, which shares similar mechanisms with Agricola making it a familiar experience to someone who has already played this game before, while being different enough to feel like a different game.Opening the box it is obvious why it is so huge, heavy and expensive. It contains a plethora of wooden and thick cardboard pieces which is a pleasure to smell. The artwork is pleasing and a bit comic-y making it ideal as a family game. The setup and the rules require some serious time investing to make sure all bases are covered as there are plenty of details that can missed if someone hurries. It is supposed to take 20 minutes per player to finish but my experience has shown that it is more like 40-60 minutes per player (unless playing with experts) so make sure you have no other plans made for later.The idea is each player is managing a family of dwarves. Your play mat is split into two areas; the forest and the cave. The forest can be turned into a farm where you can grow livestock, grain or vegetables. The cave can be explored to dig for ore and rubies, or furnish different rooms (caverns) differently to acquire unique bonuses. In addition to that, each dwarf can be "armed" with a weapon and go on expeditions to gain loot (do not expect any fancy RPG elements here, this is as simple as obtaining certain items depending on the weapon level). This basic structure is common to all players. What differentiates each player's strategy are the numerous options available on a common play mat where actions, resources and caverns are waiting to be picked in turn order. All caverns are unique and open up different, never-ending strategies to pursue.This never-ending combination of things to go for is perhaps one of the two disadvantages of this game I can think of. For a beginner, this can feel intimidating (as he is faced with too many options without being able to appreciate their significance at first) and lose interest. Therefore, if anything this is a board game that requires commitment to repeated plays by the same people. The other disadvantage is the amount of time it takes to set it up. I highly suggest investing in some form of organiser (either tackle boxes or specialised wooden inserts). Unfortunately, I find that even with an organiser it takes time to set it up and can feel like doing too much work to play a game.In summary, this is a costly game that the more effort you put into it the better the results you gain out of it. It can appeal to anyone who is looking for a fun, strategic board game, which uses action-selecting, resource-gaining and engine-building mechanisms, and does not mind spending the time to arrange things around on the play mat. It plays solo or up to 7 players. Personally, I think it is mostly enjoyed by a group of 3-5.Super fun game, however not the most straight forward set of rules, makes it a bit of a pain to get the 1st game going. Still awesome though.Plays well with 2 players. A heavy game for more experienced gamers.Excellent fun game, with amazing quality of content. You really do need a separate container for storing all the parts. My 14 and 16 year old teenagers enjoyed the game.Better than Agricola!