Isle of Cats - Explore and Draw: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Roll (Flip) and Write, Polyomino, Set Collection
Player Age: 8+Player Count: 1 - 6 PlayersTime to Play: 30 - 45 Minutes
Game Designer: Frank West
Player Age: 8+
Game Designer: Frank West
Rundown:
In Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw you are filling your ship with numerous cats and treasures over seven rounds. Players will have four columns and three rows filled with eight green cards that commonly have cats and four blue cards that commonly have lessons. Each of these decks also has treasure cards and Oshax cards that act as a larger cat of your choice. Each round players will choose one of the columns and draw the three cards onto their ship. Within these seven rounds, you are trying to create a family of cats where a family consists of three or more of the same coloured cat connected on your ship. As the rounds continue players will select lessons that will unlock scoring possibilities that only become available to that player. At the end of the game, players will lose one point based on any uncovered rat on the ship and any unfilled rooms will lose the player five points.
Alteration:
Every game has a different combination of cats, treasures, lessons and Oshax cards. All of these card types (except for the lessons) will be used to fill up the ship board so you lessen the effect of losing points for unfilled rooms or uncovered rats. The variation between games comes from the random selection of cards that each player has available each round.
The other main part of the alteration comes from the lessons. As these are selected they become unlocked as scoring possibilities for the end of the game. These will include different challenges such as only using three colours of cats, filling both captain rooms (on the opposite side of the map) or leaving rats uncovered. This highly changes the game each time you play as you won't always have the same lessons revealed each game and you also won't select the same lessons as your opponents.
Production:
Everything in the game is greatly produced with whiteboard markers and whiteboard ships included.
Interaction:
There are no interactions between players in this game. The interaction instead comes from beating the scores of your opponents and your own previous scores. This is a harder game than expected where you have to manage to focus on enough of everything to not lose too many points at the end of game. If you focus too much on lessons and don't fill your board you could easily lose 30 or 25 points at the end of the game for simply not filling enough rooms.
Determination:
Pros:
- Each game feels different.
- Has the compulsion to play ‘just one more time’ to see if you can improve your score.
Cons:
- The shapes are harder to draw than other roll/flip and write games.
I am yet to play the original Isle of Cats that this game is based on, so i can't speak to any similarities with that game. However, this is a challenging flip and write that has already received an abundance of playtime in the short time I’ve had it. It is simple to grasp your mind around but the challenges of the game develop over the time it is played. The challenge isn't purely due to the lessons, as players have to learn to balance meeting lessons, filling rooms, gaining treasure and creating large families to successfully optimise their score. If you enjoy larger flip/roll and write games then this should be an instant purchase as it is a great game that will have much more playtime in the future.
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