Dinosaur Island
These reviews were left by users who have played the game. If you'd like to leave a review, you can start by going to the game page.
Dinosaur Island feels like a sloppy design with an identity crisis. Gameplay is built on a foundation of euro style mechanisms that feature an uncharacteristic amount of luck and don't feel intertwined nor cohesive. Dinosaur Island simultaneously invests heavily into theme, but underwhelms due to thin and inconsistent thematic connections which expose what's under the hood. Don't be fooled by the kickstarter hype! Dinosaur Island is a hollow experience that plants itself on a fence and serves nobody.
Good medium-weight euro, have played roughly 15 times and still am not sick of it. Setup can be a pain though.
+ Nice looking game - eye catcher + Objectives/plot twists change the game a good amount+ Easy to play- All the dinos feel the same - I wish they had different abilities or something that made them feel unique amongst the 3 categories- Too much table space- The way you set up the island is fairly meaningless Not sure how many plays I will get out of this game - we will see if the expansion helps. Right now after 2 games it feels somewhat samey.
Love the amount of choices this game gives you. Theme is on spot, and the plot twists and objectives guarantee replayability.
Jurassic Park: the Board Game!Really like the theme of this game, who would not like to build your own Jurassic Park, create dinosaurs and see you visitors being eaten by them Took me a while to get used to the psychedelic artwork, it's an acquired taste so to speak.The game is very solid, the mechanics work well, there's a race to complete the objectives (which vary every game), you can add story twists to the game, the solo mode works really well (cards tell you which spaces are not available) and simulate the multiplayer game quite well.Verdict: Keeper!
Retail version with $30 upgrade kit (X-treme version without the special box) from the "Back from Extinction" Kickstarter.
2/1/19: This was on the wish list for almost a year and finally got it to the table. This is a very "thinky" kind of game. Planning ahead several moves in advance and making sure you have the right amount of DNA to create the dinosaurs. This part can get overwhelming, especialy if you are creating multiple dinosaurs and need to utilize the dino refinement lab upgrade all in the same phase. I enjoy this challenge though and this game will get to the table often...I hope. Need to be careful when claiming objective cards, no errors can be made as I've learned.
Excellent game. Enough variability that every game feels fresh, plenty of different routes to victory. No dominant strategy that I have found so far.
After a learning game filled with mistakes, I now understand what needs to be done to do better. Complicated, odd, pretty good, so I would play again. Hopefully making fewer mistakes!
Amazing game for the whole family! Usually not my type of game but this jumps from a 9 to a 10 just because of how it has made every non gaming and gaming member of my family fall in love with it!
It's a decent euro but that's what it all is. This is more of a hatching/building dinosaurs than really building a park. Expansion adds more modules to try. Medium game felt too short. Long game felt too long.
Being able to customize game length is awesome. High quality components, straight forward gameplay. This one is a hit with almost anyone I play it with.
8.2 / 1-4p Best 4 / 90-120m / 2017 / 2.92 (Tom 2017 release #5, Druid City #1 2017)
Wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle, yet so fun to play. I do the game a disservice, there is strategy to it, but no one mechanic is developed quite as deeply as i'd like. Rather we get a large number of shallow mechanics to interact with individually from each other. I find it just barely deep enough to keep me engaged, and I enjoy its many systems as a sort of tour through board game mechanisms. The production quality is also quite nice.
So much fun to manage DNA resources and build your dino park! Great sense of accomplishment. Amazing components! Fun solo, but I wish the solo game had victory conditions.
The game is really enjoyable. All the mechanics work really well together, with really good decisions and not too much complexity. The randomness of the hooligans is a fun mechanic without being too difficult to handle. The illustration and graphic design are absolutely fantastic! The production quality is also great. We gave the game a little higher grade because of the amazing-ness of the Deluxe Editions!