In Survive the Island, your adventurers carry treasure and inhabit an island made up of beaches, forests, and mountains. Because the island is slowly sinking into the ocean, you must move them to the safety of a rescue island via rafts before three volcanoes erupt to earn enough points to win the game. There are sharks, sea serpents, and kaiju creatures lurking that can eliminate adventurers, and opponents can throw them into the ocean. Will you be able to guide enough of your adventurers carrying the most treasure off the island in time to win? Bring bravery, cunning, and survival skills to find out.
To play: Each player controls 10 adventurers that each have a point value between 1 and 5 (2x of each) printed on the
bottom. Before the game, players take turns placing each meeple on the island.
You may look at their point values once before they are initially placed on the
island but not after that until scoring. Each turn, players take 3 actions.
- Move up to three spaces with either one meeple or divide moves between them. If you move a meeple that is in the water, you can only make one move with it that turn. You can also move an empty raft or one that you have the most meeples on. There are spaces for three meeples on a raft. If a raft reaches a rescue island, the survivors disembark, and they are safe.
- Take an Island tile and look at its back. All Beach tiles are removed first, then Forests and Mountains. Some tiles have immediate effects, such as placing a shark in the space the tile was on, and others can be played once now or during a future turn. If there was an adventurer on the tile, it now is swimming in the water, unless a tile’s immediate effect places a creature there, in which case the adventurer is out of the game.
- Roll the creature dice and move the specified creature one space. If a player’s meeple is already on that tile or a water space the creature moves to, it is eaten and removed from the game.
Memorizing the locations of your meeples with the highest point values and populating rafts with them first is one effective strategy in this game. Placing fewer meeples on beaches is helpful, as they are eliminated first. More aggressive moves towards other adventurers, such as moving a monster onto a tile they inhabit or choosing tiles to pick up that they inhabit, thus throwing them in the water, can be an effective offense. Regarding player count, a 2-player game is the most head-to-head strategic situation, but the dynamic can be most interesting for 4-5 players. Plan on a 45-minute playtime with a 2-5 player count. ~Marsha