Description
In the most remote corners of the world, magic still exists, embodied by spirits of the land, the sky and everything natural. As the great European powers stretch their colonial empires ever further, they will inevitably reach for a place where spirits still hold power – and when they do, the land itself will fight back alongside the islanders who live there.Spirit Island is a complex and thematic cooperative game about defending your island home from invaders. Players are different spirits of the land, each with their own unique elemental powers. Each turn, players simultaneously choose which of their power cards to play and pay energy to do so. Using combinations of power cards that match a spirit's elements can grant free bonus effects. Faster powers take effect immediately, before the invaders spread and ravage, while other magics are slower and require forethought and planning to use effectively. In the spirit phase, spirits gain energy and decide how/whether to grow: reclaiming used power cards, seeking new power or spreading their presence into new areas of the island.The invaders spread across the island map in a partly predictable way. Each round they explore certain lands (parts of the island); the next round they build in those lands, forming settlements. The round after that they ravage there, bringing blight and attacking any native islanders present. The islanders fight back against the invaders and offer the spirits other help, though perhaps not always exactly as you'd hoped. Some powers work through the islanders, helping them, for example, to drive out invaders or cleanse the land of blight.The game escalates as it progresses: the spirits spread their presence to new parts of the island and seek new and more powerful powers, while the invaders step up their colonisation efforts. Each round represents 1-3 years of alternate history. At the start of the game, victory requires destroying every explorer, town and village on the board – but as you frighten the invaders more and more, victory becomes easier: they will flee even if explorers or even towns and villages remain. Defeat comes if any spirit is destroyed, if the island is overrun by blight or if the Invader deck runs out before victory.The game includes various adversaries to fight against (e.g. a Swedish mining colony or a distant British colony). Each changes gameplay in different ways and offers different difficulty levels to keep the game challenging as you gain skill.
