The Quest for El Dorado: The Golden Temples – Into the Ruins We Go

In The Quest for El Dorado: The Golden Temples, you’re leading an expedition deep into the heart of forgotten temples, hoping to grab the treasures before your rivals beat you to it. If you’ve played The Quest for El Dorado before, this one might feel familiar at first, but it’s definitely its own thing. Instead of trekking through jungles and rivers, you’re weaving your way through a maze of ancient ruins, dealing with blocked paths, odd guardians, and plenty of pressure.

Your goal is straightforward enough. Collect one gem from each of the three golden temples and make your way back to the treasure chamber. The first player to return with all three wins. Sounds simple. In reality, it’s quite a puzzle.

👥 2-4 players, ages 10+
⌛ Playing time: 60 minutes
📝 Designer: Reiner Knizia
🎨 Artwork: Vincent Dutrait

🏢 Publisher: 999 Games (Dutch version, review copy provided)

Gameplay Overview

You begin with a basic personal deck of expedition cards and a single pawn on the board. On your turn, you play cards from your hand to move across the board or to buy stronger cards to improve your deck. The board is made up of different types of terrain, like jungle, water, torch-lit ruins, and villages. Each space shows a number of symbols. To move onto a space, you have to play a matching card with power equal to or higher than the number shown. You can’t combine multiple cards for a single space, so every move requires some thought.

Your hand is four cards, drawn from your deck at the start of each turn. After playing them, they go into your discard pile. Once your deck runs out, you reshuffle the discard pile to create a new one. Some red base camp spaces make you permanently remove a card to pass through. This actually comes in handy later on, since thinning your deck means you’ll see your best cards more often.

Buying new cards is the other key part of your turn. You can buy one card per turn from the shared market. These cards cost coins, which you generate from yellow cards in your hand or from gold tokens. You can also pick up coins directly from certain spaces on the board. You’ll use coins to buy new cards or enter certain spaces marked with coin symbols. If you don’t move or buy anything on your turn, you gain a coin instead. You can hold up to three of these, so there’s always a small benefit to a quiet turn.

If there’s a vacant spot in the market, you’re allowed to buy any card from the piles next to it, as long as you can afford it. Once you do, that card’s pile is added to the board to fill the gap, which slowly refreshes the options.

As you explore the board, you’ll hit blockades. These are spaces you can’t pass until you play a card with the right symbol and strength. Once a player clears a blockade, they keep it as a token. This might not seem like much at first, but those tokens can break a tie at the end of the game. After it’s cleared, that space stays open for everyone.

Then there are the guardians. These figures sit next to the path and activate when you stop beside them. Some effects are helpful to other players, like letting them draw a card or gain a gold coin. Others might be less kind, such as forcing you to lose all your gold. A guardian won’t activate again unless you move away and later stop next to it again.

The real objective lies inside the temples. Each one has three spaces, and if you stop on one, you collect a gem. You’re only allowed one gem per temple, and after you’ve picked up all three gems, it’s a race back to the treasure chamber. The first player to arrive there with the full set triggers the final round. Every other player gets one last turn to try to finish.

If only one player makes it back in time, they win. If more than one finishes in the same round, the winner is the player who collected the most blockades along the way.

Game Info

The Quest for El Dorado: The Golden Temples is a standalone entry in the El Dorado series, designed by Reiner Knizia and published by 999 Games. Knizia is known for his long list of designs, including Lost Cities, Tigris & Euphrates, and Modern Art. Here he sticks with the deck-building and movement formula from the original El Dorado but gives it a fresh twist.

This one plays with 2 to 4 people, recommended for ages 10 and up. A typical session takes about 45 to 60 minutes, though it can move faster once everyone knows what they’re doing. While it borrows the foundation of the original, the focus has shifted from jungle exploration to navigating a network of temple ruins. You don’t need the base game at all to play, but if you do own it, you can mix it in for a bigger setup, even together with its expansions.

Components and Artwork

When it comes to looks, The Golden Temples is thoughtfully put together, both in style and function. The artwork, by Vincent Dutrait, gives the game a colourful, slightly old-school adventure vibe without getting in the way of gameplay. Each type of terrain has its own colour and texture, which helps you quickly tell things apart on the board.

The tiles are large and double-sided, so you can set up new paths each time you play. They slot together cleanly and have just enough detail to set the scene without becoming distracting. You’ll spot ruins, rocky edges, and overgrown steps, but the focus always stays on the game.

The wooden pawns are shaped like explorers and come in four distinct colours. They’re simple but charming, and easy to tell apart. The tokens for blockades, guardians, coins, and gems are sturdy and printed clearly. The gems are translucent plastic, and collecting one always feels like a small victory.

The cards are cleanly designed and easy to use. Each one shows a character with its own little visual identity. Some look brave, some slightly overwhelmed, but they all make the deck feel like a group of actual expedition members. Symbols and numbers are easy to spot, even during quick turns.

The rulebook does a decent job of getting you going. The layout is clear, with examples and a full sample turn to show how things fit together. It’s friendly enough for more casual players, without too much complicated language. There’s even a page at the back that gives extra info on what each card does, which we found helpful, especially during the first couple of games.

Gameplay and Mechanics

At the heart of the game is a race. You’re trying to grab three gems, each from a different temple, and make it back to the treasure chamber before anyone else. Every player starts with the same basic cards, and over time you’ll pick up new ones to improve your movement and flexibility. Some spaces force you to remove cards from your deck permanently. That may sound punishing at first, but it actually helps you trim things down and make your deck more focused.

Each turn, you can move and buy, but you’ll need to manage your hand carefully. Each card only gets used once, either for movement or to earn coins. You’re only allowed to buy one new card per turn, so every choice matters more than it might seem. There’s always that feeling of wishing you had one more coin or a slightly stronger card, but part of the fun is making do with what you’ve got.

The guardians throw in a bit of the unexpected. When you stop next to one, it flips over and its effect activates. Sometimes it hands out coins to the other players, or makes you lose yours. Sometimes it gives your rivals a chance to thin their decks. They’re not game-breaking, but they do shake up the tempo and force you to react.

Blockades also change things up. You’ll need to play the right card to clear them, and once they’re gone, that path is open for everyone. You also keep the token, which could be used as a tiebreaker if more than one player makes it back in the same round.

The race element is where the tension builds. You can’t move through spaces occupied by other players, which means a badly timed move can block someone else or leave you stuck. Temple entrances, narrow corridors, and the final stretch back can all turn into bottlenecks when things get tight. Nothing aggressive, but you’ll definitely feel it when someone steps right into the spot you were aiming for.

It scales well from two to four players. With more players, the map feels tighter and the pressure ramps up. In a two-player game, each person controls two pawns, which keeps it balanced and adds a bit of extra planning. It works, and doesn’t slow things down too much.

The game plays quickly but gives you just enough to think about. There’s no hidden information or wild luck swings. You draw from your deck, so there’s some randomness, but a well-built deck smooths that out. Planning your path, watching your opponents, and knowing when to take a risk is where the game finds its sweet spot.

Final Thoughts

So, what did we think? Overall, The Golden Temples is a well-paced, clever little race game. It keeps things light without losing focus, which is part of what makes it so enjoyable. It’s approachable, yet rewards players who take the time to plan their moves and keep their deck lean. There’s something satisfying about sneaking into a temple just ahead of someone else or watching them take the long way round while you slip through a shortcut.

It’s not a game of deep strategy, and it’s not trying to be. If you’re after heavy mechanics or high-stakes decision-making, this might feel a bit light. Also, while the iconography is clear, the colours used for terrain types can be a bit close together under certain lighting. Not a big issue, but something to be aware of.

There’s no solo mode, which might be a miss for some, especially given how quick the game is. But with the right group, it plays smoothly and rarely overstays its welcome. In fact, we’ve had a few games where we finished and immediately felt like playing again. Either for revenge or because we were sure we could do better next time.

If you’re new to the series, this is a solid starting point. And if you already own the base game, this offers a slightly tighter, more tactical variation that still feels connected to the original. Just don’t forget that this is a race. Efficiency often beats perfection, and timing is everything. If someone grabs their second gem, it might already be time to start planning your way out before they’re already sipping coffee in the treasure chamber.

📝 We received a review copy from 999 Games.