Isle of Monsters: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Set Collection, Drafting, Simultaneous Play
Player Age: 10+ Player Count: 2 - 5 PlayersTime to Play: 20 - 45 Minutes
Game Designer: Joshua DeBonis, Nikola Risteski
Player Age: 10+
Game Designer: Joshua DeBonis, Nikola Risteski
Objective:
On a tropical island you are trying to capture and train cute monsters to appear scary. This is so you can keep uninvited guest away from your island. This will be achieved by capturing and feeding monsters than scaring your opponent’s monsters to gain the most points.
Game Anatomy:
Creature Cards:
Each creature card will include a scare value in the top left of the card, the type of creature represented by the background colour, the creature type they can scare in the top right and the food they require on both the left and right side of the card.
Food Tokens:
There are three food types: yellow, blue and pink berries. Each monster will be different and may require a mixture of these foods, ranging in the amount from 1 berry to 6 berries. The food tokens will be kept in a draw bag to maintain randomness when drawn.
Scare Tokens:
These are the victory points you will gain by scaring your neighbours (other players). They will come in values of one and three.
Cage Boards:
This is where you will hold the monsters while you are feeding them. The cage boards can only hold three monsters.
Island Boards:
There is a central island board that will sit in the middle of all the players and an outer board that will sit between the players.
Setup:
- Place the central island in the middle of the players. Give each player a cage board and place the outer islands between each player.
- Shuffle the creature cards. Remove one random card if playing with 3 players or remove all cards with a value of 6-9 if playing with two players.
- Deal face-down cards on top of each designated island location. Then flip them face-up once dealt. The amount of cards available on the central island will change based on player count:
2 players will be 8 cards
3 players will be 6 cards
4 players will be 4 cards
5 players will be 3 cards
- Draw and place food tokens equal to the players on the centre board and two on each other board.
- Place the scare tokens within reach of all players and give the draw bag to the player that is the most fearless, they will be the first player.
How to Play:
Isle of Monsters plays in several rounds until every monster card has been drawn and placed on the outer islands. Each round will have a Nurture Phase, Mature Phase, a Scare Phase and a Clean-up Phase.
Nurture Phase:
In the nurture phase each player will have three options on their turn. They can either; place a monster from any of the two outer islands next to them to an empty spot on their cage board, they can feed any of their monsters one food from the centre board or one food from the island next to them, or they can pass (if they are the first to pass they will be the first player in the next nurture phase). Once everyone has passed this phase will be over.
Mature Phase:
Any monster that is fully fed will now return all used food to the draw bag and the monster will go into a face down pile next to your cage board. This is your hand of monsters.
Scare Phase:
All the cards that have matured this round or from previous rounds will create your monster hand. As long as there are cards in player’s hands, everyone will simultanousely choose one, or multiples of the same creature type, and play face-down. Additional to being face-down, the card(s) should be covered in some way so opponents cannot see if more than one card is being played.
Each player will now check the total value of their card(s) and the player with the highest combined value will gain 3 scare points. If you scare either of your neighbouring players, you will gain one point per scare. This is done by those players playing the creature type shown on the top right of your card. This will occur multiple times until everyone or all-but-one player has played out their hands. If you have remaining cards once everyone else has played out their hand then you will gain one scare point per card leftover.
Clean-up Phase:
In the clean-up phase each outer board will have two food tokens added, the centre board will gain food tokens equal to the player count and each outer island will gain a new monster added from the draw deck. If this is the last monster then the next round will be the last and players will score to see who has the largest amount of scare points.
Final Thoughts:
Key Points:
- Good family weight game.
- Includes multiple ways to gain points.
- There can be a lot of hate drafting food and monsters just so opponents can't have it (which I enjoyed but others may not).
Isle of Monsters is a good family game. It has enough decisions to keep adults engaged but the main draw would be for younger players. Based on the family you have, hate drafting could be an issue in this game as there are several opportunities to do this in each nurture phase. Due to the way scoring works there are a couple of ways to gain points in the scare phase. This ranges from keeping cards in your hand at the the end of the round, aiming to play the largest value card, or simply trying to outplay your neighbours and scare them as frequently as possible. Once learnt, this is a game that children could remember the rules of play without adult supervision. If your looking for a family game and your family has no issue with hate drafting then this is one to add to your collection.
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