I’ll be straight up with you: I’m a huge fan of Lost Ruins of Arnak. The gameplay and the experiences I’ve had with it have provided some of my favorite moments at the tabletop. I’ve also had the opportunity to cover all of the previous content released for the game. So when I heard there was even more Arnak on the way, I was eager to see what could be added to an already amazing game.

If you want to catch up on my previous adventures in Arnak:

• Lost Ruins of Arnak review
• Lost Ruins of Arnak: Expedition Leaders review
• Lost Ruins of Arnak: The Missing Expedition review

This time around, we have two very different additions to the game. Twisted Paths gives experienced players entirely new temples to tackle and new mechanics to learn, while Surprise Shipment takes a simpler approach by injecting a pile of new cards and sites into the existing game.

Twisted Paths Expansion

The Twisted Paths expansion was originally part of the big box crowdfunding campaign that fulfilled in 2025. The expansion offers two new maps and temples, new components specific to each map, and a host of new tiles that can be integrated into the game.

More importantly, these aren’t simply new coats of paint. Both temples change some of the assumptions experienced Arnak players have developed over dozens of plays.

The Owl Temple

The Owl Temple introduces several of the expansion’s new components, with the biggest change coming from the temple itself—or the lack of the traditional one.

Instead of the normal temple tiles, players collect broken idol pieces throughout their research. These differently valued pieces can be acquired by spending various resources and icons. Once collected, pieces can be joined together to provide another place to use idols rather than spending them on the immediate-action spaces of your player board.

The Owl Temple also features secret passageways that players can explore once during the game using their magnifying glass. Once a passage is explored, the magnifying glass is replaced by a new lamp token for the remainder of the game. Moving the lamp farther up the research track provides new unlocks along with additional end-game points.

Exploration has also been tweaked. Different combinations of travel symbols are required to visit certain locations, forcing players to rethink some of their normal travel strategies. The biggest change comes in the second row of Level I sites. These locations now provide two idols to the player who discovers them, but getting there costs two coins in addition to the normal three-compass exploration cost.

That makes those locations tempting but expensive. If you’re willing to invest heavily in exploration, however, the extra idols work perfectly with the Owl Temple’s new mechanics.

The Spider Temple

The Spider Temple introduces dark tablets and puts much more emphasis on interacting with artifact cards.

As players move up the research track, they earn black tablet tokens from a track along the bottom of the board. Players can spend these tablets to activate artifacts placed directly on the research board, but that power comes at a cost: every tablet you use is worth negative points at the end of the game.

There’s another wrinkle. Each artifact location also acts as an area-majority competition. The player who activates a particular location the most will score bonus points at the end of the game.

Of the two maps, we enjoyed the Spider Temple the most.

Artifacts can sometimes get neglected in Arnak because compasses are so valuable for exploration and other requirements. The Spider Temple lets players interact with far more artifacts without constantly worrying about paying their compass costs or having enough tablets to activate cards from their hands. Playing with the Professor also created some interesting interactions, since he can choose from his briefcase when deciding which artifact to add to the display.

That doesn’t mean the Owl Temple isn’t fun. Its middle-tier exploration spaces provide some great rewards if you can afford the additional coin cost, and the alternate research-track bonuses can push players toward very different strategies. However, not everyone in our games interacted with its new mechanics equally. It definitely favors players who explore aggressively and have plenty of idol tokens to spare.

The Spider Temple, on the other hand, felt like its new systems were constantly tempting us to interact with them.

Solo Mode Additions

Both temple tracks include special solo tiles that are added to your rival’s deck to determine how it interacts with the new mechanics.

Twisted Paths also introduces an Objectives mode. Each round, three objective cards are revealed. If the rival achieves a condition first, it earns a temple tile. If you complete it first, you don’t earn the tile yourself; you simply prevent the rival from getting those points.

I enjoyed the additional tension this creates. You’re constantly deciding whether denying your rival those extra points is worth changing your own plans. Sometimes playing defense makes sense; other times, you’re better off letting the rival have the points and pursuing something more valuable.

Then there are the purple action tiles. These ratchet the difficulty of your opponent up to 11. I played with them once, and I don’t even want to talk about how badly I lost. They’re nasty.

Twisted Paths Verdict

I loved the new temples and the different styles of play they brought to Arnak. Both forced me to reconsider strategies and resource priorities that had become familiar after playing the base game and previous expansions. That being said, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend Twisted Paths to someone still learning the game.

This expansion is designed for players who have already spent a lot of time exploring Arnak and want something that disrupts their established strategies. Previous expansions have been a little more flexible, using overlays and additions to modify the familiar board. Twisted Paths gives you a separate board that doesn’t support those previous overlays and changes enough core mechanisms that inexperienced players may find themselves overwhelmed.

For veteran explorers, though, that’s exactly what makes it exciting.

Surprise Shipment Expansion

If Twisted Paths is about changing how you play Lost Ruins of Arnak, Surprise Shipment is the epitome of a “more stuff” expansion. And I mean that as a compliment. The expansion adds 50 cards to the game along with a few new sites, providing more variety without fundamentally changing the Arnak experience.

New Sites

The new Level II sites allow players to remove an idol they have already placed in one of their player-board slots. This reopens that slot, allowing you to use its quick-action bonus again and potentially recover some of the points you otherwise would have lost. These were a fun addition on their own, but they become especially interesting when combined with the Owl Temple from Twisted Paths, where players have even more reasons to acquire and use idols.

Item Cards

The 20 new item cards provide some excellent travel and resource options. The puppy and kitten featured on the box can provide quick activations of campsites once acquired, while several other cards introduce useful travel combinations and resource-generating effects. There’s even a Fancy Tea Set that allows its owner to win any and all ties for the rest of the game. Because apparently proper tea etiquette is the true key to archaeological dominance.

Artifacts

The artifacts are where the real meat of Surprise Shipment comes into play. Special Mourning artifacts provide resources or upgrades based on the amount of Fear in your deck, up to three cards. Rather than Fear simply being dead weight, these artifacts can turn a bad situation into an opportunity. Altar artifacts can be purchased using either coins or compasses, giving players additional flexibility depending on how their economy has developed. Ominous artifacts introduce another interesting wrinkle, providing a potential bonus—or a Fear-related effect—when they are exiled from your deck. Then there are cards such as Waystones, which allow players to swap the positions of two different Level I sites and then activate one of them. Played at the right moment, it can create some wonderfully strategic possibilities. These cards don’t reinvent Lost Ruins of Arnak, but they do give you more interesting decisions to make within the systems that are already there.

Surprise Shipment Verdict

Overall, Surprise Shipment introduces some really fun card effects and is an expansion I could see working for almost any Arnak player. Unlike Twisted Paths, none of these additions require you to relearn major parts of the game. The cards aren’t dependent on another expansion to be useful, and you can easily shuffle them into a collection that contains nothing more than the core game.

Is it necessary? Absolutely not. But that’s also not really the point. If you already enjoy Lost Ruins of Arnak and simply want more items, artifacts, sites, and weird little strategic opportunities showing up during your games, Surprise Shipment does exactly what you want it to do. It’s an easy mini-expansion to recommend to players who want more Arnak without dramatically changing how Arnak plays.

Which Expedition Should You Take?

These two expansions approach Lost Ruins of Arnak from opposite directions.

Twisted Paths asks experienced players to forget some of what they’ve learned. Its new temples alter familiar systems, encourage different strategies, and provide a welcome challenge for players who have already explored Arnak countless times.

Surprise Shipment doesn’t want to disrupt anything. It simply takes the game you already enjoy and gives you more toys to play with.

For newer players, Surprise Shipment is the easier addition to incorporate, while veteran players looking for a more substantial shake-up will get much more out of Twisted Paths. Neither replaces the excellent content found in the previous expansions, but both give longtime fans another reason to pull Lost Ruins of Arnak off the shelf.