Over 30 years ago, the board game Escape from Atlantis had players try to escape from a sinking island made up of plastic tiles. 3 decades later, Survive the Island is here as somewhat of a spiritual successor – with the same concept of getting your meeples off an island before it sinks or they get eaten by various sea monsters.

In this review we’ll be taking a look at Survive the Island and seeing what it has in store for both families and adults, and if this is worth adding to your board game collection.

Massive thanks to Asmodee UK for sending us over a copy to review. If you would like to support the site then why not use our affiliate Element Games for your gaming supplies?

So without further ado, jump onto the nearest raft and pray that there’s no sharks as we dive into Survive the Island

Survive the Island Review

Survive the Island is a game by Julian Courtland-Smith and published by Zygomatc games for 2-5 players.

The premise is simple – each player has 10 meeples that they are trying to get to safety off a sinking island. The twist in this game is that each Meeple has a different points value in the base of it. You’re allowed to look at the points value before you place it, but once they are on the board you’re going to have to leave the rest to memory to remember which ones are the most valuable ones!

Getting off the Island isn’t going to be straight forward however, as not only is the island slowly sinking into the waters, but it’s also inhabited by various monsters!

Setup is pretty straight forward – players first construct the island out of card tiles. In our first game we went for a more realistic setup of hills in the centre, then a ring of woods and then beach – but in practice just putting tiles down randomly leads to a more interesting and fun game. Unlike Escape from Atlantis, the tiles are card – however they are still different thickness which gives it a nice 3D quality.

The players then take turn to place their Meeples on the island next, and unlike Escape from Atlantis only a single meeple can go on each tile, making it a rush to try and get the best positions to maximise your escape route!

Finally players take turns placing some rafts, which are the primary way of getting off the island.

Each turn, each player gets to make 3 moves – this could be moving a raft one space and a meeple 2 spaces, a single meeple 3 spaces, or maybe 3 meeples 1 space each. There’s lots of options here and pros and cons to different approaches – there are some restrictions however – in a sea tile you can only ever move one space if you’re swimming, and the player with the most meeples in a raft is the one who is able to move that raft.

This leads to some hilarious backstabbing as each player scrambles to get into the best position.

Esentially, you’re trying to get your meeples to safety on one of the corner islands. Once the game ends, everyone reveals their points and tallies up the total to see who wins.

You’re going to need to move quickly however, as after you have done your movement, a section of the island sinks. You take a tile from the smallest section of beach, then once the beach is gone you move onto woods, and then finally the mountains. After a few games you’ll soon learn that putting your meeples on small sections of beach at the start of the game is a recipe for disaster as they are most likely to end up in the sea first! Equally, smart players will remove tiles in such a way to pick on other players.

Survive the Island mixes things up by having each and every tile removes trigger a different effect – some of these are beneficial such as allowing a player to move a raft, a swimmer or a creature – or even have the ability to defeat a creature entirely! These green borded tiles can be saved and used at any point, and only you know what is on your tile, giving you a little insurance against other players.

Some tiles have red borders, and these are used as soon as you get them – some spawn new rafts, while others destroy everything in adjacent water spaces for example.

Volcanoes are the “time limit” of the game, and once 3 are revealed the game ends.

The really fun part however are the creatures – draw one of these tiles and a shark or Kaiju is placed in the revealed water space.

Not only are these fun from a gameplay point of view, they also have some amazingly cute meeples to represent them too! But what do these creatures do?

The last step in each players turn is to roll the creature dice – this determines which of the monster types on the board move – the Sea Creature moves only 1 space but destroys both rafts and meeples (and as they stat near to the safe islands there is lots of scope here for wiping out a boat just as they are about to escape!), the shark moves faster but can only destroy swimmers, and the Kaiju can also move on land and destroy rafts, but simply pushes meeples back (Which can actually be used to put your meeples in a better position)

Like with all good games there’s lots of scope here but ruining someones plans and ganging up on the winner.

Games are quick and frantic, with them being wrapped up in around 30 mins – and even if it looks like someone is ahead, you can never be 100% sure who has won until all the meeples are turned over to reveal the points!

Summary

So what do i think of Survive the Island? We had a lot of fun playing this as two adults, but the game is easy enough to learn for kids to get involved too (though they might not like the backstabbing elements!). While simple at first, there’s actually a lot of tactics and bluffing at play here too – do you maybe encourage the other players to chase down the raft you know is filled with low value meeples while your high scoring ones make a sneaky escape? Rather than use the monsters to hunt down the enemy do you instead use them to clear a path off the island for you? As you play more games you’ll get a feel for what icons are under which tiles and start to set up a battle plan based on that.

My main disappointment is that the tiles are card based rather than plastic, and this can sometimes make it a little hard to pick them up without knocking other tiles – though plastic tiles would need a much bigger box and a higher price tag.

The game is very reasonable with an RRP of £28.99, making this a great pick for an xmas stocking filler too!

I’m looking forward to introducing this game to more people and seeing what carnage ensues!

Survive the Island is available for purchase now for £28.99

Asmodee UK sent Sprues & Brews a free copy for review purposes.