With that in mind, here’s a quick overview of the game from Board Game Geek: While the gameplay is certainly good in its own right, I believe it’s the aesthetic of the game that led to its popularity and, as such, the lessons in this post are dedicated to analyzing that aesthetic. It plays quicker, the drafting and choices made felt more meaningful, and it also doesn't take a full table just to play.Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.įor the purposes of this post, I’m going to talk mostly about Dinosaur Island’s superficial qualities. The dinosaurs are still interchangeable, but I found the game a lot tighter. Weirdly enough, although I disliked Dinosaur Island the more times I played it, I actually really liked Duelasaur Island. It would require rebalancing some of the scores, but I wish that the game would have the hooligans eaten first, but consequently have a higher vp penalty for eaten visitors. I imagine they are also the ones getting too close (or sneaking) into the dinosaur pens. They're already the ones getting in where they're not supposed to. Also, I think thematically it would have made more sense to me to have hooligans be eaten first. It's clear that it's an intentional part of the design so that taking upgrades that address hooligans have some value, but it's a bit of an unsatisfying part of gameplay. and finally the hooligans themselves do not provide points). That same patron is gone, so they don't provide vp. So hooligans end up costing you triple when dinosaurs go on the loose (The patron that gets eaten decreases your vp. What particularly frustrates me is that not only do the hooligans themselves not provide VP nor Income, paying customers are the first ones eaten. You don't even have to recapture the escaped dinosaurs. You don't have to worry about the animal's habitats, nor about the care of the animals. In many ways, it feels more like an amusement park game than a dinosaur zoo game. The game is weirdly clinical, where it's more of a calculated corporate greed (letting people get eaten for the sake of winning the game), rather than the feel of messing with forces that don't wish to be contained. Dinosaurs don't behave in an unpredictable way, the humans don't do something stupid that can lead to catastrophe, etc. Not only do the different species not "really" matter (outside of the 3 major categories), but considering the thematic ties to Jurassic Park, there's not really a "man's hubris leads to devastation" element. I'll further emphasize that I didn't think the theme really came through. Not only is it over produced with a linen bag and tons of meeples, it's also a terrible mechanic.Īgreed on all counts. It's like playing lords of water deep and whenever you do a quest you roll a 6-sided die and you don't gain rewards on a 1. For each visitor you draw from the bag and there's a small chance you draw black meeples that don't give income or points. At the end of each round for each visitor in the park you score 1 VP and get 1 income. But placement is just completely irrelevant, it's just a tableau builder. The component are so flashy and over produced hiding a mediocre and simple game. It's light weight worker placement, yet had 4 phases and takes table space like a big game.Īll dinosaurs are the same. While playing I cancelled my pledge because of how bad the game is. My friend had back the first one and I played his copy. I missed the first kickstarter, got really hyped and backed the second one. The rulebook is beefy because each phase is lengthy and a separate mechanic entirely.but, after playing a couple of rounds the flow makes sense. Board presence is akin to Feast for Odin. I think the game is fun if not a bit intimidating at first. The recommended beginner game is too short to get into the strategy, but, it did a good job prepping each of us to quickly play the 5 phases for our second (real) game. We played two 3-player games (the first was the recommended beginner short game) and it was a fun experience. Resource management, worker placement, drafting/bidding, tile placement, and engine building are the familiar mechanics that make up the core of the game. A single round takes a while as you navigate through each phase. Overall the game is a hybrid that plays out over 5 phases. It comes with a set of custom dice which is always nice. It's, honestly, an odd pairing with the exciting/very dangerous dinosaur Park builder. I dedicated myself to meticulously setting the game up and reading the rule book (version 2.0 was a very solid guide) before our game night. My wife and I unboxed it almost immediately but we never got around to learning and playing it.įast forward to today. I bought this game a few months ago while reading Jurassic Park (I'm a sucker for thematic alignment across entertainment mediums).
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