Afrikan tähti, translated as "Star of Africa" or "African Star" is a Finnish board game created by Kari Mannerla, first released in 1951. The goal of the game is to travel around Africa to find the "Star of Africa", also known as the Cullinan Diamond
, and bring it back to the starting point.
A key mechanic of the game is the tokens, which contain everything from gemstones (which are immediately sold for money), bandits, horseshoes, nothing, and the Star of Africa itself. Before the game starts, all of these are turned face down, shuffled and distributed among the game's cities. You roll to travel to cities, and receive their tokens by either paying for them or rolling a 4, 5 or 6.
The game received an Expansion Pack in 2014 titled Retkikunnat ("Expeditions").
In 2005, Mannerla released a similar game, Inkan aarre ("The Inca's Treasure"), which instead takes place in South America.
Tropes:
- Anachronism Stew: The use of commercial plane travel implies that the game has a contemporary setting, but the titular Star of Africa was discovered back in 1869, and the booming slave trade referenced in the game took place even earlier.
- Bandit Mook: Three of the cardboard discs contain Bandits: they steal all of the player's money. This could leave you on an island, and travelling by ships costs money, meaning facing a Bandit on St. Helen, Madagascar, or Canary Islands was practically an instant game-over.
Popular Game Variants were needed to fix this until decades later, new printings featured rules that featured an official solution to the problem. - Color-Coded Stones: The gemstones only come in one color each, so they're easier to tell apart. Topazes are yellow, emeralds are green, rubies are red, and the titular diamond is gray or blue depending on the version.
- Culturally Sensitive Adaptation: The 70 year anniversary edition replaces the African thieves and pirates with dangerous wildlife.
- Expansion Pack: Retkikunnat adds quite a few mechanics, such as expedition cards and event cards.
- Global Currency: The only currency used in the game are pounds, despite many African countries in real life having their own currencies.
- Gratuitous English: Every location on the game board uses its English name, despite the game itself being Finnish.
- Luck-Based Mission: While you have control over where your character goes, whether you find the titular diamond (or find a horseshoe after someone else has found the diamond) is purely up to luck.
- Mission-Pack Sequel: Except for a couple of new mechanics, Inkan aarre plays almost like Star of Africa on a new map.
- Not Completely Useless: Horseshoes are useless, unless someone has already found the Star. If the player who finds a horseshoe gets back to the starting point before the player who found the Star, they win the game.
- Obvious Rule Patch: The original rules had a small flaw - the game could become unwinnable for one or more players because of the cost of travelling by sea and the possibility of getting robbed or finding the titular diamond on one of the islands. After 50 years of unwinnable games and Popular Game Variants, the sea travel was patched to resolve the formerly unwinnable situations by making sea travel free if the player has no money, but only 2 spaces at a time.
- Roll-and-Move: How many steps you can take is determined by rolling a die.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: In the game's original version, it was possible to get permanently stuck on an island because of the cost of travelling by sea and the possibility of getting robbed or finding the titular diamond on one of the islands. After 50 years of unwinnable games, the sea travel was patched to resolve the formerly unwinnable situations by making sea travel free if the player has no money — but only 2 spaces at a time.
- Vanilla Unit: Some of the tokens are blank and have no effect.
