In Papua, players lead a scientific expedition to Papua New Guinea, one of the richest territories in flora and fauna, in the late years of the XIXth century. Their discoveries will astonish the scientific community — but only if they run the expedition successfully. Whomever manages to collect the most relevant discoveries will be remembered throughout history.

In more detail, players have to manage their scientists and assign them to several tasks, from cultivating good relationships with the natives in order to get their help for the expedition to making sure that everyone gets fed at the end of the day! But most importantly, they work to gather the most amazing collection of new discoveries though secret bidding to amaze the world at large.

Players roll dice and allocate the results to the different areas of the board — huts, logistics, expeditions, funding, hunting and fishing, and field notebook — assigning their scientists to different tasks. Usually majorities determine which player wins each of these areas, which are where players can gather money to fund their expeditions, collect food to feed the crew, discover new scoring opportunities, or recruit more scientists. But the most important area is the expeditions zone, in which players can secretly bid for the discovery of new species of plants, animals or even native tribes. End of game scoring is based on the sets collected from the discovery zone, and the player with the highest prestige based on these sets wins the game.