A co-operative game which pits players as spirits helping to defend an island from an invading forces. This is a puzzle style game with light deckbuilding where you build the power of your spirit to cope with an increasing invading force over time. It can be played solo with one map board or cop-operatively with an expanding island based on the player count.
At the start of the game each player has a unique spirit with four bespoke power cards. Over time you will add new minor and an occasional major power to your deck to enhance your strength and increase your options as the invaders increase. On a turn you will use resources to pay for cards you wish to play, which provide an island board interaction such as moving or defeating invaders, or defending territory areas. Your spirit board state determines how many cards you can play and how many resources you recover each turn. Each spirit has its own style with an emphasis on offense, defence or assisting other spirits. Cards played will also contain colour elements which are combined to generate addition actions.
Components quality are a little mixed, the spirit boards are lovely and thick, tokens are pretty standard and the island boards based on the player count will fit together in different configurations which is a nice bonus. The plastic invaders, towns and cities are underwhelming though and a lacking a bit to monitor when damage is done.
Each round the game generates new invaders to explore into new territories, build towns or cities and ravage the land which is where blights can occur, and these can cascade to neighbouring territory if duplicated in an area. As such this is game of control and damage limitation, where winning requires you to defeat invaders or cause enough fear to make them leave.
As with many games of this type if you start to lose control of the mission it can be hard to recover the game curve as the difficulty increases. The end game can also come suddenly which then lacks some final intensity build up.
This is a great and highly regarded co-operative game, the unique spirits with their powers, boards and artwork stand out and is where most of the expansion interest lies.
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Expansions
Alongside the main core box there are expansions you can add to enhance or change the gameplay (my additions highlighted green = own, blue = part owned, red = not purchased) :
Horizons of Spirit Island
A stand alone starter set and the cheapest entry point. Comes with an improved rulebook and start guide, five new spirits of lower complexity level, cardboard tokens rather than plastic and a board that covers all the play areas including fear and invader decks. Often found discountted, this is a great value starting point if you just want the base game without more complicated scenarios and adversaries and is a relatively cheap way to add to the core spirits too.
Branch & Claw
The first expansion released and a completion of the core set ideas with some extra rules, events and two new spirits. This is an obvious expansion choice for the core box but is perhaps surpassed by the larger box called Jagged Earth.
Feather & Flame
Adds four new spirits of higher complexity level, plus a new adversary and a couple of scenarios, but is not one of the most sought after.
Jagged Earth
Generally considered the most useful and comprehensive expansion, with ten new spirits, new power cards, adversaries, scenarios and events. It also has two new island boards. This has a huge amount of new content to add.
Nature Incarnate
Requires both the core set and Jagged Earth to play, this adds eight spirits plus a new Incarna mechanic. Likely to be a later addition.