Description

Kamelipeli (The Camel Game) is an abstract tile placement game for the whole family published by the UNICEF association of Finland (maybe in the eighties or early nineties?). The rules recommend an even number of players.

The game includes a fairly large thin cardboard showing a two-colour drawing of the African continent filled with squares (135 of them). Some of the squares have names of African countries in them but this has no effect on gameplay. Similarly highlighted are some areas of severe drought (namely the Sahel area).

The game is played with event cards and two types of small squares of thin cardboard. One set of tiles is blue on the other side (water) and green of the other (vegetation). The second set is brown on the other side (drought) and on the reverse there can be one of three different pictures of a camel (or a note: pick up an event card).

Gameplay consists of placing a brown tile on the map, checking the size of the camel on the other side and either leaving it there, swapping it for a blue tile, flipping a blue tile green or picking up an event card and following its instructions.

An example of an event card: "Measles is a very serious disease among African children. You are vaccinating children against it. You may remove one brown tile from the board."

The goal of the game is to build a continuous green line of tiles across Africa. All players build this line together, but the winner is the one who places the last green tile to connect two opposing coasts. A slightly longer game has the players trying to fill at least half of the map with green tiles (the winner again placing the last one).