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Spirit Island
Never before has a game looked so much like it would use resource-management only to have, in fact, zero resources. Spirit Island is a coked-out asymmetrical hand-management phenom with an area control system that really is something else. You don’t spread out with an army – you expand your “presence” so that your cards will affect more areas. And once your spirit has presence in an area, you play cards that are both mechanically satisfying and thematically enjoyable. You throw enemies into oceans, send invaders fleeing with nightmares, relocate cities by unleashing locusts into the streets, and send a friendly pack of tigers to tear apart poachers.
And those asymmetrical spirits are way more ‘A’ than symmetry. This co-op’s wonderful system is simple enough to understand after a few plays, and complicated enough to keep the quarterbacking issues from ever rearing its head. You won’t be telling the other players what to do – you will be BEGGING for help as the invaders spread like wildfire into your areas. If you can’t handle an enemy ontop of you, hopefully one of the other unique spirits in the game can be your hero. And even if everyone is doing all they can to help, there WILL be moments that feel like you’re passing a stone while being drawn and quartered. Good times, honestly.
Spirit Island’s hook is as sharp as any heavy game. How in the holy f*ck can you deal with so much villainy spreading so fast? The game’s turn strikes once you’ve gained some control over the map, and the finale is often a humongous round that shows how powerful you’ve become. And so I promise you – Spirit Island is one addictive game.
Gameplay
The goal of Spirit Island is to remove the enemy invaders from the board by playing cards and triggering unique powers. You lose if the island has suffered too much blight (Which appears as the invaders do damage). You do not have a deck – cards are either in your hand or in your discard pile. There is an action to recall all cards from your discard pile to your hand. Each round is split into 5 phases.
- 1st phase – Your unique spirit will pick one ‘growth’ option, which allows you to gain new cards, recall your played cards, add more of your presence to the board, and gain energy to play cards.
- 2nd phase – All players talk about their plans and play cards, in any order, without a turn structure. You simply explain what you can do, and listen to what others are planning. By the end of this phase, all cards that will be played this round must be revealed and paid for.
- 3rd phase – All cards, and powers triggered, that have a speed of ‘fast’ will go off. Again, there is no turn structure. Players discuss and agree on a specific order, and then each fast effect is performed.
- 4th phase – The most terrifying moment in Spirit Island. This is when the invaders do EVERYTHING. A deck of enemy cards reveals where the havoc happens, so very little enemy behavior is a surprise. The invaders will attack one kind of area, build structures in another, and spread their men into another.
- 5th phase – All cards and powers with ‘slow’ speeds are triggered in any order by every player. These are often the most powerful abilities, but they must wait for the enemies to wreak havoc before they trigger.
There are two main ways to negatively affect the invaders. The first is damage – cards/powers that kill soldiers and destroy towns/cities. The second is fear – cards/powers that deplete the fear pool. Each time the pool is depleted, a fear card will pop off before the enemies turn, giving the player’s a random benefit. The fear pool is then replenished, and needs to be depleted for more fear cards. But one of the most important benefits to cycling this fear is that it also makes winning the game easier – the more fear cycled, the requirement to win becomes easier.
This marriage of causing fear and increasing the chance of winning while throwing big punches is the key to learning Spirit Island.
The Hook
An Overwelmbing Burden
You begin Spirit Island with 4 unique cards, a little bit of presence on the main board, and a feeling in your stomach akin to swallowing razor blades. You have a pathetic starting hand, very little energy to spend on them, and are staring at a main board that has more enemy figures than a war game. And then it gets worse. Set-up includes one invader card being flipped, showing where new invaders arrive and where they will both build and attack on future turns. These b*st*rds appear fast, unpredictably, and all over the f*ck*ng place. To calm yourself, you will need to breathe deep, relax, wrap yourself in a warm blanket, maybe just pack up the game, shut the cover, throw it in a fire, and chug 10 shots of Jager to forget how terrifying that was. Except you can’t – Cause if you take it off the shelf of shame, you must play the game.
Analysis Paralysis IS the hook of this game. It’s like starting a puzzle in a pitch-black room, where the lights slowly start to brighten as you feel around the table. It can take a while before anyone plates their first card as each player slowly takes in what they are about to lose in right now in order to get ahead.
The good news is that once you know where the invaders appear, you can strategize. Their deck reveals what they will do and in what order. Sure, it’s a lot – they attack, build cities, correct your grammar. But once you’ve played Spirit Island a few times, the joy of experimenting with a new , or familiar, spirit really revs up the problem solving part of your brain. If you yearn for a game where the problems begin immediately after set-up, the opening turns of Spirit Island might be your drug.
The Turn
A Successful Counterattack
One of the greatest moments in any game of Spirit Island is the first time you are truly able to turn the tide. If you’ve never played, this feeling can be hard to understand, but it has EVERYTHING to do with the fifth phase I had described. Many cards and powers will not go off when played/triggered. They are slow, but powerful, and will pop off after the invaders complete their actions. This requires planning and effective communication with your teammates.
This also brings up another beloved aspect of Spirit Island – the social nature of planning actions together. It’s not like Pandemic, where some players are treated as pawns, guilted into taking actions based on how the group voted. No one but you can piece together the best use of your cards – Everyone else is dealing with a hand that is just as complicated. These wonderful discussions have each player saying what they can do, what they need done, and what they can achieve on future turns, and explaining what you can do with slow powers requires the most attention. It is true that the invader phase is the most terrifying, but the card selection phase is a close second. So much needs to be stopped or dealt with in such a small period of time.
But when the powers work together, especially after a few turns of spreading your presence and gaining powerful cards, your slow powers can blast the ever-loving sh*t out of the invaders. This is the turn of Spirit Island – when well-laid plans reverse the invader’s progress. You will watch your teammate wipe out multiple cities while you drive large groups to the coast while another stops a city from forming all together. These moments are euphoric and remind us of why we play games. It will remove that heart-squeezing fear you experienced earlier and bring the hope you need. That is, until the invaders take their next actions and shovel more sh*t for you to deal with. The game is relentless!
The Bite
Crush or Be Crushed
Near the end of Spirit Island, whether you are doing well or falling apart, the winning scenario is in sight. The win condition changes, based on fear cards, but usually requires all invader cities to be destroyed (usually). What is often true at the same time is that your loss is ALSO dangerously in sight – blight tokens have spread and may outnumber your presence. The finale often sees these two possible endings in a race and they are NECK AND NECK. One smart card combo and you simply win. One wrong move, and, well, the winning option has its neck broken.
This is the finale. You are now earning heaps of energy while playing your most powerful cards and triggering the asymmetircal powers of your spirit, all while the damaged island continues to suffer from what you could not stop. Healing where you can, and when you can, is still an option, though stopping future blight is often a more worthwhile move.
The closeness of a loss and the power you wield are what make this finale a heart-racing phase of the game. So much so that no matter if you lose or win, you will absolutely want to shuffle up and deal again.
