In Isle of Night, two to five players explore an island represented by a deck of cards. On your turn, draw cards from the deck and choose one type of card to keep. Any unclaimed cards remain from turn to turn, creating a growing pool of choices and a greater sense of tension. 

Some cards allow you to manipulate the point value of different types of cards, encouraging strategic shifts in play and exciting, memorable moments.

Disclaimer: I purchased the game myself, and the opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.

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Review:

The rules come in a small booklet and are clear and concise with some nice pictures and examples. The set up is quick and easy, which starts off with you picking one of the 6 ‘islands’ for use in the game, returning the others back to the box. The island card you choose will show you how the layout of the scoring card types.

The explore cards are shuffled to form a 116 card deck, and are placed within easy reach of all players. Set up is now complete.

You’ve heard tales of a mysterious island filled with treasures and wonders, but it appears only at night. With your loyal hound at your side, you row at dusk toward the island, eager to uncover its secrets and confront its dangers.

On a player’s turn they will draw 3 cards and place them face up in the central area of the table, where all players have access to them on their own turn.

The cards in this deck are;-

Beetles

Butterflies

Spiders

Dragons

Serpents

Treasure Chests

Conch Horns

Lanterns

Cursed Rings

Scrolls

Spears

Swords

Magic Staffs

Locations (each of these is classed as a unique type)

Each time cards are drawn they are placed with any cards of the same type, except locations which are placed separately to each other, and as the game continues some of these groups may have several cards in the group. Once they are placed down, the current player then chooses one group of cards and takes all of those available into their own area, which will help you score points at the end of the game, before play passes to the next person and they do exactly the same.

For example on the first player’s first turn they may draw one butterfly card, one spider and one beetle.

They choose to take the butterfly card, and they leave the other two cards on the table. The second player then draws 3 cards and they draw one beetle, one lantern and one butterfly. They choose to take beetles and will take the one they drew and the one previously drawn by player one.

This continues round and round until the end of the game is triggered, which is done by the player taking into their card pile the lantern card which equates to 3 lantern cards plus the number of players, so for a 3 player game when the 6th lantern card is claimed from the table the game ends immediately.

You can only take a Dragon card if you claim a sword, and you can only take a Serpent card if you claim a Spear card. For example a player claims the 2 Swords that are available, and can then claim up to 2 Dragons if they are also available on the table. The same goes for Spears and Serpents, and you can always claim Swords without claiming any or equivalent numbers of Dragon cards, and again the same for Spears and Serpents.

The position of the score cards, which are those determined by the initial island card, will tell you how you score points based on how many sets of beetles, spiders, butterflies etc., you have collected during the game, with some cards having one of its type on them, and some having two.

Lanterns each score 1pt and treasure 2pts.

You will work out your score and the player with the most points wins.

Isle of Night is an excellent little card game that can be used on it’s own for a game night, or as a nice little fill in game before or after your main game.

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