REVIEW : Spirit of the Island (PC)
A Spirit Island game is all about making difficult decisions, and sometimes even making sacrifices. The game is divided into parts, the first of which is the spirits phase. At this moment, each player takes action at the same time, selecting from their character’s growth possibilities. Among these alternatives are adding a new presence token to the board, earning a power card, gaining energy, and regaining discarded power cards.
Players then choose which powers to use for the turn, spending the appropriate amount of energy. Powers are limited by their energy cost as well as the maximum number of cards players can play in a turn. As the game progresses and additional spirits appear on the board, their values will rise and open up new possibilities. Power cards are classified as either quick or slow abilities.
The game moves on to the quick powers level once everyone has chosen their cards. Any quick abilities that players chose can now be triggered in any order that players agree upon. Because each power has the potential to drastically affect the board state, using the chosen powers in the wrong order may render several of them ineffective.
After all of the quick powers have been engaged, the invaders will try to create villages and cities in your territories. The invasion board contains all of the relevant information in the board game. The board has three squares, Explore, Build, and Ravage, which determine what the invaders do where on each round. Face-up cards from the invader deck indicate the terrain type the invaders will be acting in.
The new Explore card will be activated when you finish construction. Explorers, like in the previous round, will enter the lands listed on the invader card. This time, we’ll make use of wetlands. All wetlands adjacent to a town, city, or coastal area will receive Explorers. The wetlands and jungle cards will then slide to the left, and a new card will be drawn and placed in the Explore space for the following round.
We now have a jungle in the Ravage space, wetlands in the build, and mountains in the exploration in the next and last round of this example. The Ravage phase is the most difficult.
Invaders will cause damage to the area and attack the Dahan in ruined lands. Each adventurer receives one damage, each town receives two, and each city receives three. Lands that sustain two more blows will rot and become toxic. If they take two hits, Dahan will be eliminated as well. If any Dahan survives the ravage, they will react by doing two damage to an invader in the space. If you’re lucky, the Dahan will take out a few invaders.
At this point, the invader track will be full throughout the rest of the game, giving players a clear idea of what the invaders will be doing up to three rounds ahead at any one time. One of the aspects that makes Spirit Island so enjoyable is this mechanism. Players enjoy the satisfying pleasure of being precisely informed enough to plan with 100% efficiency when they know what their colonial enemies will do.
A game of Spirit Island can only be won once all of the invaders have been removed from the board, which is nearly impossible. Here comes the Fear mechanism.
Dread is generated by ability cards or by destroying invaders; destroying a town generates one fear while destroying a city generates two fears. Dread is generated and placed in the Fear Pool, which has a maximum capacity of four fear generated per player. When that level is reached, the Fear Pool is depleted, and players draw a card from the Fear deck. Each of these cards has a bonus ability that activates right before the Invader Phase. Some of the skills allow each player to select an invader and move them to a different area, which is useful for transferring threatening invaders into idle territories. Other Fear cards will cause an effect that destroys an Explorer on the same land by using each Town.
One of the first things I noticed was that Spirit Island lacks a multiplayer mode. That’s good for one player, but it detracts from an already fantastic multiplayer experience. The lack of cooperative play in the digital edition detracts significantly from the game’s enjoyment.
Handelabra’s Spirit Island has only two modes of play: standard and quickplay. Selecting the new game from the main menu will take you to the normal mode.
By accessing the game in this manner, players can choose all of the original game’s parameters, such as the playable spirits, island size, invaders’ place of origin, and multiple difficulty levels. This allows gamers to enjoy Spirit Island with all of the possibilities that make it so rewarding. Quickplay, on the other hand, handles all of the player’s setups. They only need to choose a difficulty level, and the game will do the rest. Given that the typical new game setup just takes a few seconds and allows players to select from all available spirits, the Quickplay function seems completely unneeded.
I understand how much effort goes into developing a multiplayer mode. There is a lot of money spent on supporting multiplayer capabilities, whether they are driven by matching-making or hosted matches. Given how small the market for digital board games is, I see the wisdom in Handelabra not enabling internet multiplayer, as the ROI would be very poor, if at all. But, regardless of how well I grasp the commercial side of the choice, it leaves a lot to be desired. As I previously stated, the finest aspect of Spirit Island is the open collaboration and fun of working together to solve the mystery.
I find it impossible to uncover all of the creative power combinations that a group of minds may come up with without this feature. Keeping track of four separate spirits and their skills as the sole player adds an extra layer of difficulty to an already difficult game.
