Isle of Cats Review

What do you do when a ruthless pirate tries to take over an island? You rescue its cats and take its treasures of course.

How do you do it? Fish. Lots and lots of fish.

Isle of Cats combines a lot of different mechanisms in one game; card drafting, polyominoes, set collecting, an economy, the list goes on. This game is an adorable Frankenstein. Each round consists of five phases starting with collecting fish. Next comes the draft where each player must pay fish to keep any cards they want. Then playing lessons where objectives can be placed publicly or privately. After this, the fun part, rescuing cats. There are a set number of cats on each side of the board based on the player count. The left side is cheaper so you need to start planning all the way from the draft. Cats are placed on your boat in groups of the same color (or not, depending on your objectives). Once everyone has rescued their cats then special treasure and Oshax cards are played. Oshax are wild. They are big chunky pieces that take the form of any color of cat. This repeats until the last round. Then everyone tallies up their scores and the game ends.

The Good: I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love a good polyomino game and this is one of them. There are so many different shapes and sizes of cats and they're all adorable. The variety of objective cards means that you'll never play the same game twice and there are several expansions out that increase replayability.

The Okay: Because there are so many mechanics intermingling it can be a bit hard to follow along with at times. The phases are all laid out well enough so its not too challenging to follow but there have been times where I got lost. Especially at higher player counts.

The Not So Good: Maybe it was my group at the time but I struggled to teach this one. I had to repeat the rules several times over. It's possible that the theme just didn't click with them or they just didn't listen to me. I've always struggled to teach, even though I'm the one that learns the rules. It also just may play best at 2 players.

Overall: 9/10 fluffy cats

I feel like I put this game down more than I intended to in this review. It's actually one of my favorite games and one that I had extremely high on my list. I've play it several times since I got it and it's never going to leave my collection. With the Kittens and Beasts expansions coming out in a couple of months, I can't wait to dive even further into this world of cat rescuing and treasure pillaging.