Dinosaurs. With just that one word, I have already captured your interest, right? There is so much nostalgia that goes into grabbing a big plastic dino and destroying your LEGO villages, or having fistfuls of dinos, all shapes and sizes to explore, fight and devour your dioramas as a kid. If you are anything like me, our youth was surrounded by some of the best dino things around. All the original Jurassic Park movies. Dinosaurs the TV sitcom. Dino-Riders and Extreme Dinosaurs the cartoons. The Land Before Time. Transformers Dinos. All of these and others made the Jurassic, Cretaceous and Mesozoic periods a focal point of my youth.
Now I am a dad, full-on into the geek culture and my own young kids to entertain and play games with. So many games itch the scratch of storylines and themes I have wanted to play, but the one that has truly captured my attention came to my doorstep in late 2017 and has been a staple on our table since. Dinosaur Island arrived, taking all the things I love about Dinos, Boardgames and the 90’s and smashing them into one extreme package that captured my interest, my youth and my favorite things about games.
Background
Dinosaur Island is published by Pandasaurus Games and created by Jon Gilmour and Brian Lewis. It was initially featured on Kickstarter and the Original Project received a pledge of over $500, 000 with 5,602 backers.
The fanfare for Dinosaur Island was swift and strong, as many people were pulled in by the gameplay videos, the style and the substance. Truth be told, the style and art also turned off some people to the game. I jumped in and backed this at the Deluxe Edition and was counting the days as they sent us information on the campaign and style that the new game would be featuring. I was pumped and excited to play this game when it was delivered to my house.
The Components
This review will focus on the “Deluxe Edition” of the game featured in the first Kickstarter.
First off, this game is heavy. Legit heavy. There is a lot packed into this box and a lot of amazing things that were featured in the deluxe edition of the game. To take a look at an unboxing of the game, check out this link below as my son Ethan and I kicked it open and checked out all the goodness:
So the stuff you get crammed into this box include:
Let’s talk the best parts of these components: the coins and the dinomeeples.
The Coins
I am a coin connoisseur and love all sorts of metal coins. I have bought games just based on the coins in the past being metal and nice. This game takes metal coins and drives it up to an 11. They are huge. They are heavy and thick. And the colors are awesome. These coins easily rank in my top 5 types of metal coins in games and ones I really like to use. The dino profiles on the different denominations look great as well.
The Dinomeeples
Now the regular edition of this game has one type of dinos, but if you go big with the deluxe, you get a variety of dino types. Ultimately there is nothing special about the differences when it comes to gameplay, but I love to match up my dinos and stick them in their pens accordingly. They are sturdy plastic and you get a ton of them to use-way more than we have ever seemed to need. I love the style and the detail given to them and hope other games follow in turn with making their extras really pop.
Honorable Mention of Awesomeness: The Slap bracelet
If you are younger than myself you may not remember the awesomeness of slap bracelets-those hard smacking rigid bands that contour around the wrist. This game gives you a slap bracelet in the form of a first player token and it is distracting and amazing all at the same time.
Gameplay
Dinosaur Island takes up a lot of table space. When you get this one out for your game group, make sure you have the room. It is a beautiful game to look at once it is placed out. Each player will take their pieces: 1 lab board, 1 park board, 9 workers, 3 scientists, 5 tokens, 10 marker cubes and 6 limit cubes.
The board will be set up in a style in the middle that allows the different phases to flow (more on that in a minute). You will place the Market Board, Research Center, and Track Board in the middle of the setup. All of the coins, dinomeeples and extra paddock tiles are set up around the boards. All of the Specialists, attraction tiles and lab upgrades are shuffled and placed on the Market Board.
You will reveal a market row, end-game objectives and plot twists to begin the game as well. The end-game objectives will determine the type of game you play. The choices are short, medium and long. Despite the number of players, this choice will allow you to determine the length of play. The plot twists make sure you won’t play the same game twice, manipulating the game a number of different ways.
Setting up your individual board, you start each game with 4 workers in your lab along with 3 scientists in your research pool. You will adjust your DNA track to give you one each of the basic DNA and none of the advance to begin. Your threat level and excitement levels start at 1 to begin the game.
The game progresses over 5 phases that repeat each round. This will continue until all but one of the end game objectives have triggered. Once that last objective that needs to be triggered is completed, the game will finish the current round through phase 5 and score at that point. The 5 phases of each round are:
1-Research Phase:
This is where the fun begins. The first player rolls the dice, and we can each pick from one of three things to do here. 
With one of our scientists we can increase storage, add DNA to that storage or procure a dino recipe. The number on the scientist will match the level of dino recipe you can add to your park. The number on the scientist will also correspond to the amount of storage or DNA you add to our lab. You can also pass in this phase, allowing you to save a scientist for the worker phase.
2-Market Phase
In the marketplace, each player in turn order will pick one of five actions. You can hire a specialist that may add a worker and special abilities to your park. You can also buy a lab upgrade your your lab, adding something that will make your game easier as it goes on-things like cheaper ways to build paddocks or increasing your park security. Last, you can build an attraction. In this game, there are food, retail and ride attractions, some with victory points and most with an ability to hold your extra patrons that are attracted to your park.
In the marketplace, you also have the option to pass one of your turns and gain $2 instead. Lastly, you may buy DNA and discard an item in the corresponding row.
3-Worker Phase
The worker phase switches this game mode down to your own board making your own decisions. Here you will begin to place your workers into the lab to perform actions. You can create dinos, refine your DNA from basic to advanced, gain money, or increase your paddock sizes.
To make dinos, you need the room in your park which is done by increasing your paddocks. You then make a dino to put in that paddock according to the recipe on the card by using the right DNA. Adding dinos will increase the excitment level of your park, but be warned-this will also increase your park’s overall threat level making it a more dangerous place to visit. You can fix that by increasing the security of your park, keeping a fine line between the threat of these additions and the security detail keeping them at bay.
4-Park Phase
In the park phase, you will add the visitors, adding the amount equal to the excitement level you have produced. They will hang out at the park entrance, giving you $1 each to come into your park. But watch out for hooligans-these troublemakers sneak in and take up room in your park, not paying and not giving you any victory points. They move to the front of the line, taking up spots first in your park. The rest of the patrons that can come in will give you 1 victory point each at exhibits they can go to, or dinos they can visit.
This is where that all important security comes into play. You need to check your security level to that of your threat
level, adding in the highest threat die pips not chosen in the first phase. If your threat level exceeds your security-DINOS HAVE ESCAPED! They will eat one patron for each number of the difference between your security and threat level. You lose a victory point for each visitor eaten.
5-Cleanup Phase
Finally you will reset the turn order, refresh the market, collect back all your scientists and lab workers and send all the visitors back to the bag. If a plot twist needs to be resolved, you would do it here.
There are objective cards that at any time once a player completes one will be scored at the end of the game. Another player can claim it at the same time but cannot claim it in the future. The game ends when all but one objective card is triggered. You score victory points from completed objectives attractions and dino exhiits will also score 1 victory point for every $5.
Thoughts:
Things that could be better:
-Setup. This game has a huge footprint and takes some time to set up and tear down. It is not the game you play when you want a quick setup and go type of experience.
-Hooligans. The random nature that they can come out really robs some players of victory points that should have them at the time.
-The box. I love all of it but with all the goodness they packed into this box and an expansion on the way, I would really love a huge box to hold it all!
Things that are awesome:
-Gameplay. This game flows so well. The phases flow one from the next, it makes sense as you learn it and let it move along on your own board. Most players have been able to pick it up after just a few rounds of playing and getting the phases down.
-The components. This game in the deluxe edition is amazing. The coins are awesome. The figures from the dinomeeples to the patrons are excellent as well. I love how all out they went to make this game beautiful-the pieces are some of the bet of any game I own.
-Replay. The various end game objectives and plot twists make it so you have a large variety of options to change the basic nature of the game. In as much, it makes it so you are able to really change objectives and keep the game fresh. It keeps the alpha gaming win con guys at bay pretty well.
-Time. This game allows you to modify the time you sit down to play and the best part is it doesn’t scale to number of players but instead it changes based on the objectives. You are able to therefore ply a game with 2-4 players that has a pretty set time based on the length (short, medium, long) you want to invest into game night.
-The flair. This game screams 90’s nostalgia and I love it all. The art and style is fun, and unlike anything else we have seen in the gaming world yet to this level of detail.
Overall:
I can’t say enough about this game. It is one of the best I have played and definitely my top of 2017. The packaging, the style, the components, the gameplay and the joy all packed into this box really show when it hits the table. It is a gorgeous game when laid out and I am happy that the designers worked out a way to bring this into the world. It is a worker placement packed inside a worker placement game with the scientists and lab workers. It gives you the best parts of a that style but also adds in resource management as you gain DNA and figure out how to best use those resources to grow up your park and make it the best in town. I love how smooth it plays and how much the people I love to game with like to play it. There is so much love for this game. Dinosaur Island is a great ride and one I hope you are considering taking with your game group!
Sidenote:
Pandasaurus Games is currently back on Kickstarter with an expansion for this: Totally Liquid Expansion along with a 2 player game Duelsaur Island and a chance to get the X-treme edition of the base game. Check it out to add to your existing collection or start your very own Dinosaur Island!
