Skip to main content

The Isle of Cats

Game ID: GID0335861
Collection Status
Description

The Isle of Cats is a competitive, medium-weight, card-drafting, polyomino cat-placement board game for 1-4 players (6 with expansions).

In the game, you are citizens of Squalls End on a rescue mission to The Isle of Cats and must rescue as many cats as possible before the evil Lord Vesh arrives. Each cat is represented by a unique tile and belongs to a family, you must find a way to make them all fit on your boat while keeping families together. You will also need to manage resources as you:

Explore the island (by drafting cards)
Rescue cats
Find treasures
Befriend Oshax
Study ancient lessons

Each lesson you collect gives you another personal way of scoring points, and 38 unique lessons are available. Complete lessons, fill your boat, and keep cat families together to score points, and the player with the most points after five rounds wins.

Note: The Isle of Cats: Kickstarter Edition is a compilation item consisting of The Isle of Cats base game and The Isle of Cats: Kickstarter Pack, each of which are available as separate items and listed individually in the BGG database.

Year Published
2019
Transcript Analysis
Browse transcript mentions, sentiments, pros/cons, mechanics, topics, quotes, and references.
Total mentions: 1
This page: 1
Sentiment: pos 1 · mix 0 · neu 0 · neg 0
Mentions per page
Top
Showing 1–1 of 1
Video XaQR0ofcO7Y Foster the Mele top_10_list at 12:44 sentiment: positive
video_pk 9662 · mention_pk 28541
Video thumbnail
Click to watch at 12:44 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
  • Iconic cat-theme is deeply integrated into mechanics
  • High replayability with multiple expansions and cat variants
  • Appealing art and elegant polyomino puzzle
Cons
  • Rulebook can be intimidating for newcomers
  • Can scale longer on larger player counts
Thematic elements
  • cats and kittens aboard a boat, with treasure and rat-avoidance scoring
  • A boat-island voyage focused on saving cats by covering sections with polyomino cat tiles.
  • cooperative but competitive tile-laying with a strong cat identity
Comparison games
  • Calico
  • The Isle of Cats: Cats & Beasts expansion
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
  • card drafting — Draft cards to acquire cat tiles and scoring opportunities, balancing threat and reward.
  • polyomino tiling — Players place cat-shaped polyomino tiles on a boat board to cover spaces and maximize scoring opportunities.
  • set collection / treasure scoring — Treasure tiles award points and influence placement decisions, with rat-coverage affecting points.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
  • This is an essential cat game.
  • This is a cat game because cats and kittens boop on beds.
  • Calico is an extreme puzzle brain burn kind of game.
  • You are making quilts to appease the cats.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Transcript Navigation
Top
Showing 1–1 of 1
View on BoardGameGeek