Game Review: Isla Dorada

By Jeremy Anderson

Type/Time/Players: Isla Dorada is a board game with a card-based bidding mechanic. It takes roughly an hour, and seats three to six players. Because some of the offensive cards are very strong but target just one or two players, it is less luck-based the more players you have.

The Skinny: Your expedition has crashed on a mysterious island. Each player is an explorer, interested in going to some places on the island where he expects to find treasure, and in staying away from other places where old curses will kick in and make his life miserable. Additionally, players get points for fulfilling a certain destiny; visiting all the locations where the Leviathan has been spotted, or steering clear of the open sea, for instance. The trick is that the explorers have apparently watched horror movies; They know better than to split up and wander into the woods alone. The whole expedition travels as a group, which means each player bids methods of travel to get from place to place. Once someone wins the bid, they become the expedition leader (who gets to start the bidding next turn) and the expedition moves to that place. In sixteen turns, help arrives and the expedition leaves, richer and hopefully not cursed. The winner is whoever comes out the most ahead.

The Good: When players arrive on a location, the turn's marker gets placed on that space. This makes it easy to see both where the players have been and what turn it is. The art is colorful and expressive (Bigfoot is adorable!), and the mechanics are pretty simple to explain. For all the cards that take a little more explanation (such as the destiny cards), there's a cheat sheet. Players feel constantly involved, and there is a good bit of interaction as players can do a lot to hurt each other's chances if they can guess which locations the other players want to avoid.

The Bad: The action cards were clearly written with an international audience in mind: They don't really say what they do (the iconography doesn't quite cut it), so you have to look at the cheat sheet just to understand your options. On top of that, the art style gets a little muddled when shrunk down, so it can actually take a little searching to find your card on the cheat sheet.

Also, some of the action cards are extremely strong, and their random appearance is an imbalancing element in what is otherwise a pretty fair game. I'm lookin' at you, The Panda.

Conclusions: Several of the game dynamics seem like they would be very different depending on the number of players. Fewer players means more direct contention and probably more wins with low card values, while with more players the game becomes about securing clutch direction-changes to get where you're going after following the flow for a few turns. It's simple to play, not terribly confrontational, has some good strategy, and has some very elegant mechanics I haven't seen before. All in all, it's an excellent game.