From Pandasaurus comes a new board game, centered around creating the very best dinosaur theme park in the entire world: Dinosaur Island.
Dinosaur Island is a worker placement game where you are an owner of a dinosaur theme park. If this sounds similar to a certain movie franchise about cloning dinosaurs for a theme park, you would be right. Dinosaur Island has you competing with rival companies in order to build the biggest, most exciting, dinosaur park. You can research DNA to create new dinosaurs, build paddocks for new dinosaurs to live in, and build a roller coaster or burger stand in order to attract more visitors to make money and score victory points. The game plays 1-4 players and takes anywhere between 90-120 minutes per game. The game retails at $79.99 which considering all the components, is right on target.
Welcome to dinosaur Island! the place where up to four players compete to build the most impressive and thrilling park around. A truly great park requires compiling the right DNA sequences in the lab, housing your dinos, and spiffing up the park with wacky rides and refreshments. But with the coolest, craziest, most dazzling parks comes a greater need for security! you want your guest to come to dinner at the park, not be it! dinosaur Island is a highly-immersive worker placement game by Jon Gilmour (Dead of winter) and Brian Lewis and the game play is almost as nail-biting as hiding from a Raptor. Add in the oodles of eye-popping art and the Island truly comes to life. Beware.
The game time scales based on the plot cards you choose, so if you prefer a shorter game or longer game it can accommodate your group. Players will try to build the most exciting park and, in doing so, you have many options in front you. You can focus on large carnivores to build more excitement than herbivores but has greater risk involved. The more dinosaurs in your park, the more security you will need to hire otherwise the dinosaur will escape, run amok and eat your park visitors…and you lose points.
Now, let’s talk components. This game has dinosaur Meeples! I was fortunate to back this on Kickstarter, which has multiple dinosaur species in Meeple form, even a T-Rex! The metal coins in the Kickstarter version are amazing and thick. The retail copy not having all the extra bells and whistles does not diminish the amazing gameplay. The rulebook is large and intimidating, however, I am pleasantly surprised at how easy this game was to teach as well as play. With so many paths to victory, amazing theme, and not to mention awesome 90’s themes (the first player marker is a slap bracelet).
Final verdict: Dinosaur Island is a great game. My inner child was screaming with joy the entire time I was playing. I highly recommend giving this one a try, you will not regret it.
