Survive The Island

“What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster? Is it a monster?????”

I would love to reassure you and say “no!” but I can’t. Not if you’re on the island at any rate. The sea serpents and sharks may be limited to praying on you in the sea, but those Kaiju can walk on land too! Oh and there are volcanoes threatening to erupt and wipe everybody out. Eeeeep!

So what do you have to do? You have to survive! Survive The Island!

Run, you fool!

SURVIVE THE ISLAND is a family level competitive game for 2-5 players age 8+. The objective is to get as many of your 10 adventures off the Island and onto the safety of the mainland before the monsters gobble them up! The twist is that the island your folks are marooned on is shrinking.

The game begins by creating the island – place the beach, forest, and mountain tiles in a random arrangement (showing the terrain side – no peeking underneath!). Pop a sea serpent by each jetty, and then take it in turns to place out your adventurers on empty tiles. Finally, place your two rafts on empty water spaces. Extra monsters and rafts are placed to one side.

Turn structure is easy to learn –

On your turn you have three movement points to start shifting your own meeples about – hopefully towards the rafts and off to safety. You can split movements between different adventurers and/or rafts you control.

Then to simulate rising waters, the active player removes a tile (beginning with all the beaches, then moving onto forest, and finally the mountains) and flips it over. The tile will either give abilities (green edge) e.g. give you extra movements or trigger an effect (red edge) e.g. release additional monsters. If the action is an effect, it is immediate so carry it out. If it is an ability, you can use it at any time. Note that with monsters appearing, they are added to the space where the tile was removed. If any adventurer is on that space at the time the monster is added, nothing happens.

Finally, roll the monster dice, and move the one shown on the die face. The three monsters move and attack in different ways; sea serpents can only move one sea space at a time but can attack swimmers (i.e. meeples on the water tile it moves on to) and rafts (eliminating both the raft and all adventurers on them). Sharks can move up to two spaces and eat swimmers. Kaiju are beasties and can move on land or water. They can crunch through rafts or move adventurers onto adjacent spaces (perhaps those already populated by a shark or a sea serpent!), or even move a monster onto a different space (perhaps one already populated by an adventurer – you see where I am going here, right?!). Note that if the monster type is not currently on the board when you roll the dice, nothing happens. Phew!

Survive The Island ends when either all the players’ adventurers have been rescued, or three volcanoes are revealed – whatever occurs first. At that point, players turn their adventurers on their heads and add up the point value printed on the bottom of each one that was successfully moved off the island. The winner is the player with the most points.

Final thoughts!

Well, having played SURVIVE THE ISLAND multiple times, I can categorically say that we are each out for ourselves. Even in a disaster situation, we appear to wholly subscribe to the every person for themselves philosophy! Forget the parent – child bond, save ourselves!!

The rules and actions in the game are straightforward, so the decision space doesn’t overwhelm younger players. But as more monsters appear, and more adventurers drop into the water, things become more intense. Particularly so if rafts become scarce!

Players also become meaner as the land tiles disappears – moving monsters onto spaces occupied by opponents, and even destroying rafts their own adventurers could potentially use just to stop someone else moving closer to safety.

Keeping the volcanoes until the mountain tiles is a good design choice as it means that games won’t risk being over in a flash as a result of fluke flipping on consecutive early turns. And that’s good as it gives everyone a chance to experience plenty of other tiles. Conversely, if you have no adventurers to rescue, flipping over two tiles speeds up the journey to end game, which is helpful for players who have nobody left to rescue – in effect, their ability to sabotage doubles! As such, there’s a race within the race – get your folks off first and then you can focus on eliminating other players’ adventurers.

With 5 different immediate effects and abilities, there’s a good range on offer. Putting out an extra raft could be just what you need. But it could also help your opponents. Conversely, repellent is a great personal defence against a snappy shark or killer kaiju. But in reality, having one fewer monster on the board could help everyone! The randomness of the tile reveal will of course influence how useful they can be, as will the roll of the monster die. But it also stops the game being just simple pick up and deliver, shuttle style gameplay. Being able to move rafts you control also creates a dilemma if you’re sharing the space with an opponent. But ultimately, getting your adventurer to safety is probably the priority – after all, your meeple might be a high value one compared to your opponent’s passenger……or perhaps not!

I’d like to say I capitalised on the memory element i.e. prioritising my highest value meeples to safety. But with so many movements and other players taking control of rafts my people were on, I completely forgot which ones were the VIPs! It definitely made leaving no person behind even more vital!