Dinosaur Island - Pandasaurus Games board game review

Dinosaur Island - Pandasaurus Games board game review

It is now known that Eurogames do not focus on the setting; But what if you take a worker placement, embellish it with 80s graphics and illustrations, and set it up in a dinosaur-themed amusement park? Pandasaurus Games it did and it was a success. With two successful kickstarter campaigns (deluxe edition and extreme edition with expansion) Dinosaur Island, board game for 1 - 4 players from game designers Jonathan Gilmour e Brian Lewis, has conquered our tables also, and above all, thanks to the many references to Jurassic Park.
But don't be fooled by the dino - meeple in shocking pink plastic and the dice: we are not dealing with an American, but a management Eurogame, albeit lightened by some - few - random elements. Are you curious to know more? Let's see in detail what it is.Dinosaur Island - Pandasaurus Games board game review



The mechanics

Each player will step into the shoes of an entrepreneur and will have to manage their own company, aiming to create the most beautiful dinosaur amusement park (John Hammond docet!). As mentioned above, the game is essentially based on the mechanics of placement of workers. Each player will have two boards: one park plank, in which to place the dinosaur cages and attractions, and one laboratory dashboard, on which DNA will accumulate (essentially resources for the creation of dinosaurs); the actions that can then be carried out by one's workers are present on this last board.

The game takes place in turns divided into various phases: the aim of the game is to accumulate as many victory points as possible, both through visitors who will come to see the park from time to time, and by completing objectives, the number of which varies according to the number of players present at the table. The game ends at the end of the turn in which only one objective remains to be claimed or all objectives have been claimed.



Dinosaur Island - Pandasaurus Games board game review

During the turn we will have the following phases:

  • Research phase: each player, in turn, uses one of his own "scientist" workers, who differ from each other in their associated power (1, 2 or 3). With the scientists you will be able to buy the recipe to create a certain type of dinosaur, claim a nut and accumulate the DNA that it provides in your stocks (then useful for creating dinosaurs), increase the space available to store the DNA; it is also possible to pass and keep the scientist to use him as a worker in the next phase of the game.
  • Purchase phase: in turn, everyone chooses an item to buy from the appropriate common board; this operation is not mandatory and is performed twice. You can buy upgrades for your laboratory (i.e. new or more powerful actions for workers to perform in the next phase), specialists, which provide special skills and new workers, attractions to place in your park.
  • Actions phase: at the same time, everyone places the workers he has available on the laboratory board and carries out the corresponding actions. The possible actions are very varied. You can: create a dinosaur using the available DNA; combine DNA in order to obtain a different type; increase the level of security of their own park (so, subsequently, visitors will not be eaten!); increase the size of the cages, to ensure that they can accommodate more dinosaurs. Of all these actions, certainly the most relevant is the creation of dinosaurs, which involves an increase in the level of “excitement” of one's park, but also an increase in the level of danger; both parameters will have relevance in the next phase.
  • Park Phase: visitors come to see the park. As many visitors are drawn from a bag as the level of excitement reached. Visitors can be of two types: boss, yellow, paying visitors; hooligans, pink, which do not pay and do not award victory points. Fishing is certainly an element of luck that can affect the game in some cases, but there are various ways to limit the damage through specialist cards and laboratory upgrades. Each player will receive as many coins as patrons he has drawn and no coins for hooligans; subsequently, starting with the hooligans, visitors will be placed in the spaces present on the dinosaur cages and on the attractions. Before counting the victory points they provide, however, one must check if they survive. Compare the level of danger of your park with the level of safety reached: if the danger exceeds safety, as many patrons will be eaten as the possible difference between the two parameters; each of these will be worth a negative point. Once this is done, the surviving patrons inside the park will award one victory point each.
  • Recovery phase: Hooligans and Patron are returned to their pouch and all the material on the common boards is restored for a new game round.

In any phase, players can claim one of the objectives in play: within the same phase anyone can claim the same objective, but once they have passed to the next phase it will no longer be possible to do so. The objectives are divided into three types: long, medium and short game (long, medium and short game). In this way it is possible to modulate the duration of the game based on your time requirements.Dinosaur Island - Pandasaurus Games board game review



Materials and graphics

Granted that to write this review I have based myself on the edition extreme kickstarter, I found the excellent materials and certainly functional to recreate the atmosphere and the feeling of construction. The plastic dinosaurs are very cute and make a nice eye-catcher on the table. The boards are made of hard and resistant cardboard, as are all the rest of the components. The only flaw is the size of the box, which is not sufficient to contain all the material, once defused. To be able to store everything, it is necessary to remove the insert and waste a lot of time to fit everything in an optimal way, which is certainly not convenient.

The 80's illustrations are very pleasant, in general the graphics are clear and easy to understand.Dinosaur Island - Pandasaurus Games board game review

Setting

For a eurogame, the setting feels a lot. By playing, you have the feeling of really building your own park, essentially due to the set of small changes in the mechanics that have a precise meaning also according to the theme (the level of safety, paying and non-paying visitors, types of dinosaurs ...) . In short, Jurassic Park fans will like it.Dinosaur Island - Pandasaurus Games board game review

Totally Liquid: the expansion

With the edition kickstarter di Dinosaur Island it was also possible to buy the expansion, Totally Liquid, a nice addition to the base game. It is a series of modules that can be used alone or in combos with each other, which introduce new rules and new ways to score points. The available modules are:


  1. Fifth player: makes it possible for five to play;
  2. Marine dinosaurs: new recipes of aquatic dinosaurs with very particular (and sometimes unbalanced) characteristics;
  3. Park Facilities and Executives: these are respectively mini boards with separate rules and new special workers, both drafted at the beginning of the game, which allow you to direct your strategy and give slightly asymmetrical powers to the various players;
  4. PR Events: they are cards that at the end of the game will give additional points to all players based on particular parameters. Each player will have two of these secret cards at their disposal and in the end they will choose which of these will be valid for everyone.
  5. Blueprints: these are cards, secretly distributed to players, which indicate how to arrange dinosaurs and attractions on your park board. Following them is optional, but you will get points at the end of the game based on how well you have managed to follow the project.

The expansion is a nice addition to Dinosaur Island, essential if you want to play in five, with interesting ideas to increase the longevity of the title. PR Events e Blueprints they are certainly the simplest modules to introduce and, once you try them, you will probably never play without them again. Aquatic dinosaurs are perhaps the least balanced form: some are very difficult to play, others too easy (one of the dinosaurs in particular is far more fruitful than all the others) but they allow particular combos if played together with Facilities and to Executives. Definitely, Totally Liquid makes the gaming experience even more varied and fun.


Considerations

Dinosaur Island is a very light and well set worker placement game; despite the amount of rules it is easily understandable even for a novice. Since there is no title localization yet, you need to have one basic knowledge of the English language to be able to play it, against the text present on the cards and on the laboratory tiles. The possibility of modulating the length of the game is interesting, but after trying all three possible lengths I feel that the short game is not enough and leaves a sense of unfinished. The medium and long goals, on the other hand, give the time to actually build something and consequently leave much more satisfaction. The regulation, although written in a simple way to understand, is not exhaustive and, in some points, leaves several interpretative doubts.

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