30/07/2019
Spirit Island – A quick description and review
Part of the process of making games its playing a LOT of games! I particularly enjoy seeing new mechanics or new ways to combine familiar ones, it provides endless inspiration for my own ideas.
One of our newer acquisitions Is Spirit Island by Greater Than Games. This is a highly cooperative, fairly-complex game that was vaguely reminiscent of the of Black & White computer game where you played a god protecting and nurturing your villagers against other gods. In this case, all the ‘gods’ are working together against a common foe, invaders from across the sea.
Game play is straightforward. On your turn your spirit grows in power and influence, you decide what powers/cards you want to use to combat the encroaching invaders and the then fireworks start. Spells denoted as fast happen before the invaders act, slow ones happen after. When invaders act, a sliding tableau of cards indicates where they explore, build and attack the land and its people. It’s an interesting puzzle sort of feel as you can clearly see the progression so can plan for it, but only after the invaders appear. Your interactions with the invaders will terrify them, which will create other beneficial effects for the players. However, as the invaders attack, they can damage both the land and can harm your spirit.
The real meat and potatoes of the game is the card play and interaction. This is where all the cooperation comes into play. This part can take some time and consideration and is not for the faint of heart!
PROS:
- TONS of replayability. There are a lot of spirits to choose from and they are very thematic mechanically. The combinations of these spirits can greater change the way you play. On top of that there are different nations of invaders which affect game play in various ways as well as scenarios that further change things. There is quite a bit of game in the base box.
- Highly cooperative. You must work together or lose.
- Great theme and artwork
- Good tools for first-time players. There are a lot of possible powers and choosing between them could be overwhelming when you’re just learning. To assist with this, the game helpfully provides power progression guides to help you through your first couple games.
CONS:
- Not an easy game to play or win. This is not a good gateway game. While most play follows a simple flow, the card interaction and tactics are well above the norm difficulty wise.
- Can be a bit fiddly with multiple things to track once varying rules for different invaders, scenarios and blight are brought in. Multiple plays will likely smooth this out, but there is a bit to keep track of.
- Can suffer from analysis paralysis. There are so many choices available this could bog down the game. The designer recognized this and provides suggestions on how to combat it, but you would probably want to make sure all players were looking to play the same style of game beforehand (carefully calculating or more freeform).
- Similarly, as this is basically a puzzle game, there may be an alpha player issue where a subset of the players attempt to control the entire groups’ actions. This will depend heavily on your play group.
In summary, we found this a great game and really enjoyed the depth, complexity and theme. There’s just a bit of deck-building as well which we always enjoy.
