Who could want anything more than to be a groovy lemur disco dancing their heart out on a tropical island? You shimmy, you shake, you twist your tail, and boogie with the best of them. But you start to hear a grumble and a rumble, messing with the hot beat. The island begins to shake and move, and not in a funky way. Disco Ball Mountain is about to become a Disco Inferno! 

You’ve got to put on your shades and hot step it across the lava to get to the safety of the water on the other side of the mountain. Do you have enough groove in you to jive to safety, or will this be your last dance?

Find out in Disco Island Escape, a family game for 2-4 players by Hootenanny games, where players take on the role of a sifaka lemur who knows how to boogie.  

Gameplay Overview:

The game comes with a board, a deck of cards, and four Disco lemur tokens for the four characters. Each player chooses a lemur character to play as. The cards show different disco moves, each noted by both an individual color and shape. The tokens start in the center Disco Ball Mountain section of the board, showing your character’s picture. Your goal is to boogie three of the four of your character tokens on down from the start point to your character’s safe corner of the board by passing through different sections of the concentric circles. Each section is marked with the dance moves required to pass through it. 

The different color cards combine to make special moves

On your turn, you draw three cards. Hopefully, you can use some combination of these three to move at least one of your character tokens closer to safety. Your hand is discarded at the end of your turn, so you want to move as many of your lemurs as you can with what you have. Cards can be combined to match the more complicated moves. For instance, a red Twist card and a blue Shake card can be combined to perform a purple Shimmy Shimmy, if that’s what you need to get through a section. There are reference cards provided for younger players who may need help with basic color mixing. 

There are also Wild cards, which let you pass through any barrier, and Boogie to Safety cards, which let you automatically move one of your lemurs to your goal corner. If you happen to land in the same space as another player, their lemur catches Disco Fever and has to dance back to their starting point on Disco Ball Mountain. You then flip your character’s token over to its groovy side. Groovy lemurs can move twice as fast. One card can get you through two barriers of the same color instead of just one. 

The first player to move three of their four character tokens to their safe corner wins! The rulebook doesn’t explicitly say that everyone should then dance, but.. I mean… after someone wins everyone should dance. 

Characters have to draw cards or combine them to match the symbols on the board in order to move from the center to the outer edges

Game Experience:

 The art design on Disco Island Escape is out of sight. The sunset gradient and iridescent mirrorball details are beautiful, and I appreciate that this texture is carried through from the box to the tokens, making them pop on the board. The Lemur characters are distinct enough from one another that they’re easy to tell apart at a glance, and all of the dance icons are coded by both color and shape, making the game more colorblind friendly. 

The character tokens have a standard side and a Disco Fever side

There is just enough strategy and challenge mixed in with the luck of the card draw to make this interesting for players 8+. It’s more than just drawing a card and moving a pawn. With four lemur tokens to keep track of, you have to choose wisely which ones you want to use your cards on each turn. Some rings are easier to pass through with more free spaces, but those paths may take longer to traverse. We did find towards the end of the game that there were runs of turns in a row where we drew hands of cards that were unusable, ratcheting up the tension as the other players got closer to their goal while we tried to mentally summon the dance move we needed to move forward. 

Player aid cards can help younger players understand color mixing

We did find that most games were won by someone who drew multiple Boogie to Safety cards, or who got a good run of wild cards in a row. While this kept the game moving quickly and was an exciting turn of fate when a player felt like they were falling too far behind, it can be a bummer when all of the players are thinking the challenges through and planning out their route, only to have the game swept away by someone who draws too many good cards in a row.

The Disco Fever mechanic really only comes into play with more players. With two players, we didn’t run into it; with three, it triggers occasionally, and with four, it becomes a driving force in the game. This adds an element of take that, where a player can boost themselves up at someone else’s expense, adding a little more layer and nuance to gameplay. 

This is a solid family game for multiple ages. Younger players can manage with a little help learning how colors mix. It has enough strategy for the target age group to really engage with, while still having luck of the draw to keep the game moving quickly. Older players will enjoy having to explain the concept of Disco to players born after the advent of the iPad. There’s fun for the whole family to be had, with a silly theme wrapped up in a lovely presentation. 

Final Thoughts

Disco Island Escape would make an excellent holiday gift for game night families that are looking for something a little different. It’s got a funky theme that can be fun to play with and act out, and it has enough gentle challenges that it can keep everyone engaged and enjoying themselves.