Thames & Kosmos - "Australis"

Photo above is property of Thames & Kosmos

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Company: Thames & Kosmos

Game: Australis

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Tabletop Games 📬

Genre: Board Game, Party Game, Family

Date Played: August 26, 2025

Difficulty (based on 4 players): 5/10

Size of Team: 2-4 Players (Ages 10+)

Time: 60 Mins.

Price: $41.95

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Off of Australia’s coast lies the Eastern Australian Current (EAC), a warm ocean super highway, where you can find sea turtles, coral, fish and more. Each round, players draft dice to feed fish, move their turtle forwards, and grow coral. The players then use their drafted dice in a showdown. Along the way, points are earned. The player with the most points at the end of five rounds wins. Will you be able to thrive in the turbulent waters of the EAC?

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Opening the box, we found ourselves greeted with a beautiful board of the Australian coast, ready for marine life to join in. Looking through things, there is lovely artwork of turtles on the cards, clownfish tokens and coral all around. Each of the four coral sets comes in a distinct shape and color, keeping the theme front and center.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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The game is played over a course of five rounds where each round consists of three phases (which is shown on your individual play tracker). At the start of the round, players take turns drafting dice from a communal pool, where each dice allows you to take a different action. The actions allow you to move your turtle along the Eastern Australian Current (EAC) for points and tiebreakers, place coral to compete for area control scoring, collect fish that provides set collection scoring, or draw and play cards that can give you ongoing or immediate bonuses. A large red die is also available, which doesn’t have an action but is the strongest dice for the dice showdown as well as allows you first pick of dice in the next round.

Phase 2 consists of adding up the points for the round and moving yourself on the point tracker. This comes from three sources. First, how far your turtle is on the EAC, second is whoever has the most (and sometimes the second most) coral in each pool and finally how many fish you have that you can feed.

After the dice selection and point scoring has taken place, a dice showdown is set for phase 3. Players roll their numbered chosen dice (fish collection and draw card dices have no numbers on them), with the lowest dice eliminated each time until only one player remains. The winner of the battle chooses a gold or silver tile, while the runner up receives the other. These tiles give either endgame points and additional fish food depending which one is taken.

"Australis" plays fairly straightforward with three phases spread over five rounds. Even playing with my kids, after the first round they were able to understand the strategy. The game has a good mix of point management, engine building and suspenseful luck with the dice battle. The quality of the components seemed a little underwhelming as some of the paint on the dice began to scratch off after a few plays and the board is already showing some signs of wear but the artwork on everything looks so beautiful and on point with the theme, from the EAC on the board to the turtles on the cards and the fish tokens.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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The biggest strategy in "Australis" revolves around building a point engine through early card collection. By the fourth or fifth round though, it’s better to discard cards from the card collection dice to make a push on points. Specifically for the coral dice, if a 7 or 8 comes up, grab it, since getting to those pools is tough. At the same time, don’t ignore your turtle, as every tiebreaker is decided by its position on the EAC as well as getting additional fish food the further you go. Fish scoring also ramps up exponentially which you can reap benefits in later rounds if you play it right. Also, while you plan as best as you can, you can’t plan the luck of the roll for the dice showdown. If you can win without the red dice, then fantastic but if you find yourself falling behind on points, taking the red dice once or twice might be what you need to do to give yourself a boost. The rule book also mentions that getting extra fish food for winning the dice showdown is only available for the first 3 rounds so you might want to do that.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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"Australis" has a lot of high points (no pun intended) and was a perfect family game that was straightforward enough for my tween kids to learn but had enough strategy for the parents. The rounds and phases were easy to navigate but with the scoring coming from many sources, it kept everyone engaged with all the decisions. Do you try to grow more coral and block others from scoring or get more fish and hope to win the dice showdown for food? The dice showdown added some luck to ensure anyone behind in points had a chance to catch up. This was a perfect kids’ “My first engine building” game where they learn that grabbing cards early on could give them ongoing benefits later. With the eye catching artwork, little downtime and various actions from the dice to calculated decisions, this is a game that will hit the table many times at home.

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Check out our interview with the creators to understand more on the development side of the game:

Video above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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(If you do decide to try this game, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)

Disclosure: We thank Thames & Kosmos for providing us with samples of the game. Although a complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.

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