Spirit Island

Kylie Says: "The easiest game of the year pick I've ever made (2017). I played this nearly 20 times in the first two weeks that I owned it. Great for solotaire play, yet each combination of spirits you choose in multiplayer games puts a drastically different spin on your strategies."

Candra Says: "The best strategic co-operative game out there! It takes a little getting used to, but all the combinations of strategies and challenges make for incredible variety. It's also easy to scale for introducing new players even when everyone else has played before."

Spirit Island is a complex and thematic cooperative game about defending your island home from colonizing Invaders. Players are different spirits of the land, each with its own unique elemental powers. Every turn, players simultaneously choose which of their power cards to play, paying energy to do so. Using combinations of power cards that match a spirit's elemental affinities can grant free bonus effects. Faster powers take effect immediately, before the Invaders spread and ravage, but other magics are slower, requiring forethought and planning to use effectively. In the Spirit phase, spirits gain energy, and choose how / whether to Grow: to reclaim used power cards, to seek for new power, or to spread presence into new areas of the island.

The Invaders expand across the island map in a semi-predictable fashion. Each turn they explore into some lands (portions of the island); the next turn, they build in those lands, forming settlements and cities. The turn after that, they ravage there, bringing blight to the land and attacking any native islanders present.

The islanders fight back against the Invaders when attacked, and lend the spirits some other aid, but may not always do so exactly as you'd hoped. Some Powers work through the islanders, helping them (eg) drive out the Invaders or clean the land of blight.