Wouter & Ymke 
We’ve been digging through the ruins of Arnak for a few years now, and it seems the expedition isn’t over yet. Czech Games Edition has released the Adventure Chest, a large and rather heavy box that serves two purposes at once. It’s a full storage solution for everything Lost Ruins of Arnak that has been released so far, and it also includes a brand-new expansion called Twisted Paths.
The idea behind it is simple. If you’ve collected the base game, Expedition Leaders, and The Missing Expedition, you now have a lot of content spread across multiple boxes. The Adventure Chest lets you fit all of it into one large box, with a custom insert made of eight trays that keep things organised. At the same time, it gives you something new to play: a double-sided board with two temples that twist the familiar feel of Arnak into something a little different.
For clarity, Twisted Paths is also available separately, so if you’re not interested in the storage element, you don’t have to buy the big box just to play the new expansion.
👥 1-4 players, ages 12+
⌛ Playing time: 30-120 minutes
📝 Designers: Elwen & Mín
🎨 Artwork: Ondřej Hrdina, Jiří Kůs & Jakub Politzer
🏢 Publisher: Czech Games Edition (discounted review copy provided)
Twisted Paths
Twisted Paths introduces a larger double-sided main board with two temples, the Owl Temple and the Spider Temple. You use this instead of the base board. Both maps feel familiar but change how you make decisions and where you find points.
The Owl Temple focuses on secret passages and temple tiles. At the start of the game, everyone receives a lantern token, and during play you can choose to sneak into one of several hidden routes on the research track. That choice locks your magnifying glass in place for the rest of the game, so from that point you move up the track using the lantern instead. The result feels like a familiar puzzle with a few extra angles. On this board, the top row of level-one sites begins with both a face-up and a face-down idol, and they cost three compasses and two coins to discover, giving you an extra idol in return. It still feels very Arnak, but it pushes you to plan a bit differently.
The Spider Temple is more of a risk-and-reward design. It introduces dark tablets, a new type of resource placed during setup, one per player in each supply space on the board. Dark tablets can be used in the same way as regular tablets, but they also allow players to invoke altars on the research track. Players can gain them in two ways: from specific spaces on the research track or from certain map sites that provide them as a reward when you actually place or move an archaeologist there. Cards that only activate a site don’t trigger this effect.
When you invoke an altar, you place one of your dark tablets below it and set an artifact there for the rest of the game. Anyone can use that artifact later, and each player may return to the same altar up to three times. Invoking altars is powerful, but it is also dangerous. Every dark tablet you commit may lose you points at the end of the game. Unused dark tablets are first returned to the supply, which can shift the penalty value, and the rightmost empty space of that supply shows how many negative points each used dark tablet is worth. After that, players score points for majority control on each altar.
The Spider Temple often leads to tighter, lower scores, while the Owl Temple tends to open up more ways to gain points. Both are designed with the leaders from Expedition Leaders or The Missing Expedition in mind, but they can be played with just the base game. For solo play, there are new rival tiles and objectives, which extend the original rival system and make it a bit more varied.
Overall, Twisted Paths doesn’t reinvent Arnak. It is a set of new boards that deepen the systems you already know. If you didn’t enjoy the original game’s mix of worker placement and deck-building, this won’t change your mind. But if you’ve played a lot of Arnak and want new challenges without changing the feel of the game, these temples do that very well.
The Insert
The other half of the Adventure Chest is the insert. It is a proper storage system designed by CGE to hold everything released for Lost Ruins of Arnak so far. The box itself is bigger and sturdier than the original, but still fits into an IKEA Kallax shelf, which seems very intentional.
Inside, there are eight plastic trays, each shaped to hold cards, tokens, player components, and map tiles. There’s a handy five-step diagram printed on the outside of the bottom lid that shows where everything fits in the box. It is functional and feels well thought out, though it is not exactly flashy. The trays are made from thinner plastic than the hard inserts you sometimes see, but they’re sturdy enough and practical. Setup and cleanup are noticeably faster once you know which tray to pull out first, and the lids close flat even when everything is inside, sleeved cards included. Even our custom upgrades for some components fit inside without any trouble, which was a pleasant surprise.
If you only own the base game or a single expansion, the Adventure Chest might be more than you need. But for players who have kept up with the full line, it is convenient to have a single home for everything. there’s even space for the solo content that was previously only available as print-and-play, now included in printed form.
Our Experience
After playing through both new maps, we came away with the same impression we had from previous Arnak expansions: the designers know exactly what kind of game they are making, and they keep refining it rather than reinventing it. The Adventure Chest doesn’t turn Arnak into something new, but it adds another reason to return to it for those who still enjoy managing scarce resources and finding efficiency in each round.
The insert feels practical, the new boards are well-balanced, and the components keep the same level of production quality we’ve come to expect. It is a tidy, generous package. At the same time, it is important to keep expectations grounded. If you were not already a fan of Arnak, this box will not convert you. But if you have played it many times and want a reason to return to it, the Adventure Chest does exactly that: it keeps the growing pile of Arnak content under control and gives you fresh maps to explore.
Final Thoughts
The Adventure Chest feels like the natural endpoint of the Arnak series so far. Everything now fits neatly in one place, and the new expansion offers the kind of variation that long-time players will appreciate. For us, it simply ties the series together and lets it settle neatly on the shelf.
