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Quick Look: Dinosaur Island

Designers: Jonathan Gilmour-Long, Brian Lewis
Artists: Kwanchai Moriya, Anthony Wocken
Publisher: Pandasaurus Games
Year Published: 2017

No. of Players: 1-4

Ages: 8+

Playing Time: 90-120 minutes.

Find more info HERE.

From the Publisher:

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Review:

I am rather surprised that Dinosaur Island ended up in my collection. Although the game has received accolades since coming out years ago, it never really felt like something I would be interested in. After all, I usually find worker placement / Euros to be rather stale and uninspiring, and I will admit that whenever I saw photos of the game in action, its neon-colored, chart-like boards seemed to procure a sort of 70’s hippy vibe that didn’t seem at place with my tastes. 

To further fuel my disinterest was the fact that I’ve never been particularly enamored with Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, so thematically speaking, this game wasn’t going to necessarily spark any excitement for me. 

However, a few weeks ago, I needed to balance out a game trade a bit with something else to offset the value of what I had offered a fellow gamer, and his copy of Dinosaur Island turned out to be enough to ensure a fair trade for both of us. So this was how I happened upon my copy of the game.

And as you might surmise, this game already had a lot going against it coming into my domain, with at least three strikes ruling in its dis-favor from the get-go.

But still, it would be nice to see what the hype was all about, as I had heard mostly positive things about it ever since its release.

Fast forward to now, where I have had a chance to put the game through its tests, and I am ready to share my impressions.

First of all, let’s summarize gameplay. In a condensed summary, Dinosaur Island is a competitive entrepreneurial venture in which up to four rival dinosaur-making theme parks attempt to outdo each other in the gaining of precious capital (and victory points) over four distinct phases and then wash, rinse and repeat until the game’s end is triggered and final scores are tallied.

The game’s 4 phases are :

—Research :Attempt to scavenge DNA or increase your storage capacity for it.

—Market : Buy various goods, workshop buildings, researchers/specialists to help you gain a competitive advantage.

—Worker : Place your park workers in the field to perform various duties that allow you to perhaps upgrade your security (to help against rampaging dinosaurs that may break loose), upgrade Dino DNA from basic to Advanced, take money from the bank, increase the size of dinosaur cages and more, depending on whatever other facilities you have built. 

—Park : Let visitors line up to your theme park and pay you for the privilege of seeing your wonderful world of Dinosaurs. Get Victory Points for each visitor that gets to see a Dino. But if your security isn’t good enough, the dinosaurs will go on a rampage and eat your precious Victory Points….oh yeah, and maybe a visitor or twenty…

Being that this is a review and not a how-to-play tutorial, this time around I will try to avoid lengthy discourses on gameplay and rather focus on what it is that makes Dinosaur Island tick — and what impressions it left on us.  

So…

The good…

Surprisingly, most of what I have to say about Dinosaur Island is good, and not at all what I expected it to be. 

While it does indeed have worker placement elements, the fact that not every phase of the game rounds (most notably phase 2 and 4)consists of this keeps the game from getting boring. 

The game maintains a good balance of activities to scan and plan around during each phase, leaving you eying what you and your opponents will be doing for the long haul to victory. I appreciate that there are many viable options for everyone to pursue during their turns.

The way the game handles building up to phase 4 and attracting visitors and hooligans (bothersome little sneaks that creep into your park without paying and robbing you of money and VPS) makes it wonderful to see how things will pay out for everyone each round. Then the cycle can begin fresh anew.

Not only are there a variety of things to buy and plan for, the fact that the randomizations for gameplay modifiers and winning conditions make for some great replayability. Each game is special.

Components are all great! The dice that are used as a resource to be purchased are huge and chunky! While I am normally not the worlds’ biggest fan of wooden meeples, the ones pertaining to Dinosaur Island are a nice , classy acrylic. A big score there, too. And the various player / phase boards are wonderfully double-layered, being again both thick and classy in their presentation and utilization.

The game is also very streamlined in its structure. Despite having a heft sized rule book, the game plays amazingly well within the constraints of being beyond a beginner game, roughly mid-weight in its learning curve.

Also appreciated is the fact that game length can be modified according to your group’s time constraints with randomizer cards for short, medium and long duration games.

Was there anything we didn’t like about Dinosaur Island ?

A few things of note came up for us. 

If you are someone who likes a lot of player interaction, Dinosaur Island will not be for you. Indeed , the most meaningful crossings you are likely to have with other gamers at your table is when one player purchases or takes an item that someone else had been planning on acquiring. Though perhaps upsetting to your plans, thankfully, there are usually a lot of other options for you to consider, so you are never really offset too much at this inconvenience. But yeah, this is about the only time you will directly interact with another player.

The various dinosaur types (herbivore, small and large carnivore) are really not distinct enough within their own categories. That is to say, it would have been nice if various types within the herbivore category of dinosaurs (for example) each had their own distinct perk to make them more worthy of competitive consideration to acquire first. As it stands in this iteration, the only thing separating one herbivore or carnivore from the others in their respective stacks is the types of DNA required to make them, which isn’t terribly exciting in and of itself.

Luck isn’t always a huge factor in this game, but it can be during phase 4. The visitors and much-dreaded hooligans are drawn randomly from a bag for placement during this time, and unfortunately sometimes you may consistently get a ton of hooligans in your line. Though fortunately, there is at least one way to offset this with an in-game item…

The game does also have a sort of built-in catchup mechanism that the most die-hard competitive gamers may not like. Lowest scoring players will always go first, ensuring they get their first choice of precious commodities during each phase until the balance of score changes. This may or may not float your boat.

Final Thoughts :

Well, color me, shocked. I actually enjoyed Dinosaur Island well enough to rate it an 8/10 and the others who played with me would agree. Though this typically isn’t our normal flavor, it stood out enough within its own genre that we were impressed enough to entertain the possibility of perhaps seeking out its expansion to try. It’s great for gamer groups that don’t want to force too much direct competition while at the table, with players not really doing anything to directly attack or sabotage each other. My most recent review example of this phenomenon might be It’s a Wonderful World, where players there similarly are in self-contained subsets of the same world with limited and marginal effects on each other. Dinosaur Island felt just like this. 

Unlike the game I traded it in for, Dinosaur Island is definitely a keeper!  I am positive that I got the sweeter end of the deal on that bargain, and won’t soon forget it!

Did you or will you get it based on our review? Already have it? What do you think about Jazz’s take on it? Please comment below letting us know!