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| Spirit Island, a social justice game that doesn't suck by skip 03/09/2018, 1:16pm PST | ||||
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Spirit Island is a co-op game that's about an island with natives and spirits being colonized by whitey. There's a zillion civ or city building games in which you play the colonizers taking over some land. A gamer asked what would happen if the island natives fought back against the colonists instead of being abstracted away. Instead of whining at everyone he designed his own game. He playtested it for a few years then ran a Kickstarter. Game was so popular and had such good word of mouth it got picked up by a publisher.
On the board the natives are weak and will take damage from one colonist and die from a town. Spirits can't be directly damaged by colonists but their presence on their island can be wiped out with enough island damage from the colonists. Island takes enough damage? You lose. Spirit presence gets entirely wiped out? You lose. Natives all die? You lose. This game has social justice themes, but wasn't designed by a hack who decided to "empower" natives by giving them equal damage or some junk narrative that isn't grounded in reality and nobody believes. He actually thought about what would it take to win against invading colonists if the natives can't outdo them in direct firepower. 
How do you win? Kicking the colonists out using spirit powers and lowering the win condition difficulty by generating fear. Everytime you generate fear you get to wipe out a chunk of colonists who run away and you eventually lower the win conditions and possibly win just from scaring them enough. All the intrepid European explorers are secretly superstitious wusses. Much like the people who live in gated communities who stay away from certain areas once they hear enough rumors about the horrors of hip-hop and crack.  You know where the colonists are going to destroy and where they're going to build. Which new areas they're going to start planting their pasty asses is the mystery.
The game is hard. You're constantly trying to stay one step ahead of colonists who never stop coming and wrecking your piece of paradise. Each spirit plays differently from the offensive lightning bird picking off towns to the fear generating nightmares who slowly build up power until they're generating terror every turn to the earth giant who has high defense but is slow to build up. Each turn is has numerous steps but they're easy to grasp and it's simultaneous decisions so it doesn't feel plodding. Unlike Pandemic, it's hard to quarterback and boss other people around since there's so many decisions.  You're constantly trying to prevent damage while staying away from areas you know are going to be ravaged by colonists soon and build up your spirit powers.
If you start beating it there's ways to ramp up the difficulty or change the invader strategy like Britain which has added immigration because of criminals and indentured servants. Just when you think "OK, I might be able to handle this" the game ends a few turns later making it just the right length. The cards are easy to read and powers have names that are more evocative than anything Bioware or Ubisoft has produced in the past decade. 
It's really hard to state how many little things the game does well. A clear rule book with helpful suggestions, spirits with obvious strategies and complexities, icons that make sense, a board that's easy to read, multiple tiers of difficulties, characters with unique abilities that don't seem to outshine each other, a unique theme with mechanics that support it. Only minor critique is that the boards aren't flat when you get them but this is easily fixed. It's a labor of love by a guy who seems really nice which is a plus. Who might hate it? People who are allergic to cardboard games, hate co-ops, hate games that force you to plan your moves ahead, hate games that keep the pressure on, or have a /pol/ folder on their desktop. Positive! |
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Spirit Island, a social justice game that doesn't suck by 03/09/2018, 1:16pm PST  Minor edit and bonus Tom Chick by 03/09/2018, 3:36pm PST Re: Minor edit and bonus Tom Chick by 03/09/2018, 5:47pm PST Spirit Island is amazingly fun. NT by 03/10/2018, 12:13pm PST |
