It’s always worth looking into the past every once in a while. We don’t just learn about how things used to be. We sometimes gain a deeper understanding of the present as well.

The Lost Ruins of Arnak impresses with both its volume and its visuals. It’s a hefty game with impressive illustrations, very tactile components and a large number of cards and symbols. It promises a lot of game by way of a lot of components. And it’s one of the great strengths of this game, that it delivers on this promise.

Our small starting stack of action cards will grow during the course of the game. This grants us more flexibility but also increases the number of decisions we have to make round after round. We learn how to respond to our competitors at the table, when they snatch away a resource or card from in front of us. Because the Lost Ruins of Arnak is equal parts race and optimization puzzle. After a few turns, we’ve understood how playing cards, gathering resources and placing our player tokens intersect to create the game. We have to make tactically sound decisions, plan ahead and carefully weigh increasing our influence by way of new action cards with collecting victory points from a range of sources. At the end, only one of us will be able to claim the top spot on the ladder. And getting there feels like an accomplishment. We may not have exactly put in actual work to win, but due to the number of decisions we’ve made along the way our spot on the ranking feels genuinely earned. The five rounds it takes to get to the end, are just long enough to give play some weight. But they are not that long yet, to test our patience.

Our plans and decisions are embedded in a vaguely sketched setting sometime in the early 20th century. It’s a setting with narrative tropes we quickly recognize, once we are reminded of the hat, the whip and the dangerous traps found in temples, that have long been worn down by time and the overgrowth of the jungle. The Lost Ruins of Arnak make no secret of being directly inspired by the Indiana Jones series and similar adventure movies of the 80s.

While references to individual elements of the movies are obvious, they remain unspecific. Which is understandable. The game is not about recreating individual moments from the movies, but to evoke the tone and style of them. It’s about exploring the unknown and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. The latter in particular the game manages to capture in an unexpected and all the more effective way. You will often find yourself at the end of your metaphorical rope as the round winds down, because you’ve run out of cards to get you closer to your goal. Only to suddenly discover a combination which gets you some other benefit. These small victories shape the experience of playing Lost Ruins of Arnak. It’s this sense of agency that many players value and seek in games. Lost Ruins of Arnak offers many possibilities to experience it.

But this recurring moment of positive self-affirmation is only possible, because it overlooks an important characteristic of the thematic inspiration: Indiana Jones is not a hero. Despite, or maybe because of Harrison Ford’s charisima, you might not pick up on that right away. Indiana Jones is an often shady characters, whose decisions are driven by ambition, egoism and a strong sense of ruthlessness. As morally uncomplicated as his killing of Nazis may be, the way he uses friends, family and lovers to get what he wants is problematic. It’s only towards the end of his movies, when he leaves those things behind, that he acts righteously.

A similar or comparable moment does not occur in Lost Ruins of Arnak. The emotional arc of the game is bent towards success and competition. The archaeological work doesn’t end with a newfound appreciation of the culture and history of a lost civilization. It doesn’t end with recognising their worth and respecting it.

But that is mostly because there is no such civilization in Lost Ruins of Arnak. There are pictures, terminology and some components that could serve as references. But they never form a coherent picture or even a vague sketch. Even when we focus on the research track of the game board, the lost civilization of Arnak does not become more tangible. But does provide additional resources, bonus actions and a lot of victory points at the end of the game.

Instead of playing an adventurous team of archaeologists we’re closer to plundering opportunists, trying to grab as much as we can in the name of fame and fortune. We’re more like René Belloq than Indiana Jones. This unintentional shift makes the obvious empty space in the game’s theme stand out even more. The lost civilization of Arnak has no cultural history to explore. It is simply a resource to exploit in an attempt to compare ourselves to others. These parallels to real historical events, in which Europeans invaded other continents to steal its resources and buy influence at home is almost too obvious. At least if you are willing to see theme as a part of the game, not just its packaging.

The only framework Arnak’s lost civilization has for players is in its usability for their next turn. They are objects of consumption. All the small victories and positive feedback the game offers, it does so purely on a mechanical level. This – next to the strengths in rules design, presentation and components – is a missed opportunity.

It’s this null point in the game’s setting that has caused strong criticism in some circle. Some consider it a modern copy of the colonial concept of “terra nullius”. A rhetorical device, used in the past to justify the exploitation of foreign places and their resources. The argument went that these places held no (civilized) people and that was why you could freely take whatever you found there.

As a fictional place Arnak is given a lost civilization of which only objects have remained. Within the game’s setting the reasons for this are not hinted at, let alone explained. But unlike the argument of terra nullius, borne out of racism and cultural chauvinism, The Lost Ruins of Arnak has neither cultural history nor population. There is nobody whose identity as a civilized people is brushed aside. In fact, there is a suggestion that valuable knowledge and archaeologically important discoveries await. Even if that promise is insufficiently addressed by the game’s mechanism, the description of Arnak’s lost civilization is closer to a sense of awe than materialistic opportunity.

Still, that criticism of Lost Ruins of Arnak is understandable. In particular when seen in the context of discourses that center colonialism much more strongly than it does in Germany, for example. Because then this empty space at the heart of the game’s theme reads like belittlement. As if it wasn’t necessary to present a non-European civilization in a fictional narration as civilized, when the focus could instead be on the success of European raiders.

But games are cultural objects. Their impact and perception always depends on the context they are played in. This doesn’t absolve Lost Ruins of Arnak from the criticism of a blatant empty space at the heart of the game. But it does help explain how that empty space can be read very differently.

A more nuanced depiction of Arnak’s lost civilization would have led to a richer, more vivid and unique experience. It would have avoided the ugly dissonance when played by people whose perspective isn’t rooted in Europe. It wouldn’t even have required to show actual indigenous cultures or peoples. Representation, as laudable and desirable as it is, can quickly become a superficial checklist, when it is always drawn upon to explain the mismatch of intent and impact of a game. When the actual cause for this dissonance often lies deeper than that.

The lost civilization of Arnak could have been its own entity, which you could rediscover and reconstruct. Maybe even preserve it from falling into oblivion. It’s strange that a game in which you play as archaeologists puts a civilization at its center that seems to have no history. There is no rise and fall in the history of Arnak. Even the sudden disappearance of an entire civilization has simply happened without inviting any commentary. The whole of the game’s thematic impact rests on its components, its detailed drawings and some of the terminology of the game. In the past this would be considered sufficient, but the medium has grown since then.

The Lost Ruins of Arnak is a nice-looking game. Its gameplay is intriguing. The game’s challenge is pleasantly tricky. But there is nothing built on top of this robust and strong foundation. And that’s odd. A theme that is so good at activating player imagination should be more than just a coating of the game’s rules.

This makes Lost Ruins of Arnak a successful look back into the medium’s history. It is a nice reminiscence of mechanically satisfying gameplay experiences and the joyful puzzle they offer. That was true in 2020 and it is just as true today.