Spirit Island

I think the thing that most intregues me about it is the role reversal of the game's theme.

So many games--especially eurogames (grr!)--deal with the colonization or takeover of an area, often "bloodlessly" or with the elements of combat and colonization abstracted to the point of sanitization.  To have a game where you're fighting off the greedy colonists?  That's a neat twist.

I HATED Archipelago.  So anything that takes it down a peg?  I'm in.

Here's a link to the podcast for those of us who have never heard of The Geek All Stars before.

EDIT: Nope, that's just a link to their site where they don't have links to the podcast, what a waste of a site.

Here's an actual link, you want episode 80

It looks like this is the same game: http://unpub.net/spirit-island/

About all that gives is the last name of the designer ("Reuss")

Boop. 

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/162886/spirit-island

I'll have to listen to the podcast, but it sounds like a really great game!

HWWHAT

Ooh, that looks neat. Where do you people FIND this stuff?

If all you care about is Spirit Island, it's 30 minutes in.

I just listened to it. There's a lot of reveals in there! For instance, there's going to be a preorder for Wrath of the Cosmos that will unlock new promos and other things.

Christopher is super-excited about Spirit Island! He'll be running demos at GenCon. He started off saying that it was a "reverse worker-placement game", but I didn't hear it explained just what that meant (hint hint...)

My big question is, do we get to playtest this, or not, since this is an outside game.

Well, that puts a damper on my dreams of GtG invading and taking over all kinds of really cool games for the benefit of their loyal playtesters getting to play awesome new games before they are for sale.

I guess I'll have to settle for playing a whole lot of awesome games instead of All the awesome new games.  Don't really have time to do anymore anyway.

I just listened to this at work. Thanks for posting the podcast, I would have never known about this otherwise.

1. Spirit Island sounds fresh as hell. I really, really, hope I can sneak in some time to play it at GenCon, but I'll just end up letting other folks who arn't working there at the booth play it instead. 

2. The kickstarter-esque WotC pre-order idea is fantastic. I love the premise. I will be looking forward to seeing all the promos! 

3. Any time Christopher talks about something, his excitment is contagious and it's awesome.

Totally! I'm probably going to buy Spirited Island just from how Christopher talked about it.

Listen up, playtesters. You'd better be ready as all get out to playtest Spirit Island, because you can bet your Sentinels that is happening. This year. 

It was really hard not to swear a lot in that previous sentence. In a good way. I swear when I'm excited. It's a character flaw. *shrug*

AWW YEAH

Also, I cannot WAIT to see those (probably) Prime Wardens promos!

#$*&#( YEAH!

Clearing calendar of unimportant things like cleaning, eating, sleeping and holidays.

Ready for Spirit Island!

The quest for domination of the cool new games market is back on!

(apologies to non-playtesters, but it is a lot of fun over here on the [REDACTED] side)

Seeing that GtG become a publisher in their own rights, first with Sentinel Tactics and now with Spirit island is giving me incentive to go back and work on my own games. I love that Christopher is in a position to help out others with games he enjoys.

Are you guys going to need more playtesters for the slate you guys have coming up?

Just got round to checking out those links...sounds kind of interesting. Wouldn't mind giving it a go, seeing how it's co-operative :).

Got around to listening to the podcast.  This really seems like a neat concept for a game.  I look forward to checking it out.  Also, love co-op so...

They posted a picture of what they are demoing on twitter for those who aren't going to Gencon.  http://t.co/TGoOFGLJ07

That doesn't really look like an island...

The different colors are different terrain. I'm sure it'll look better in the production version, when it has art and such.

Oh, so the outline of the panels itself makes up the island.  Got it.  I thought the blue was water.

Silly Spiff. Blue is terrain. Wood texture is water.

Duh.  Sorry.

Well, the blue is areas with usable beaches, if I remember correctly. Imagine the rest of the island's edges as cliffs down to the sea.

There's a video review/description thingy with Christopher and his awesome beard* up on Boardgamegeek

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/video/51540/spirit-island/gen-con-2014-spirit-island-prototype-demo

*Yeah, I'm actually jealous of the beard.

Yeah, I agree, imprimis5. It's a very entertaining game!

A game where you get to disrupt a game of Catan? I wonder how much SIlverleaf will enjoy this game, knowing her hatred of Catan.

I thought this was a different game.

Yeah, they renamed it Spirit Island, due to copyright infringement.

Good video (other than that they referred to Christopher as Chris ) - thanks for sharing!

That game looks great. Like someone else mentioned, an anti catan

I love this game.  I can't wait to play it.

This sounds like the best game in the world. 

It does look good.  The only part that isn't turning me on is the idea of dealing with actual real-world countries.  Since the game is about mystical spirits, it's obviously not a historical re-enactment, and I'd almost rather they made up fictional empires and countries as the colonizers rather than France, England, etc.  I'd expect that not everyone would share that opinion, but asking my buddies, "so, do we want to go up against France, or... oooooh, Holland tonight?" doesn't sound nearly as fun as choosing between fictional colonial powers which have been designed for maximum thematic fun.

I do like that the generic enemies are the UFPD; The United Forces of Planetary Domination.

I completely agree. It was also my main (and possibly only) concern. The game looks solid...!

Spirit Island has at least three elements of considerable complexity -- 1) There are a wide number of possible actions each player can take, 2) The interleaving of slow and fast actions with the colonists' actions leads to a challenge in holding in mind what will happen when, and 3) The precession of which types of lands will be affected in different ways by the colonists each turn leads to a further challenge in holding in mind what will happen when.

The result, for me, is a tremendous about of brainspace required to do what I'd normally like to do, think through all the possibilities in order to choose the one I think best.

To enjoy Spirit Island, then, I had to let go of my perfectionism and allow myself to be happy with dedicating what brainspace I could. This was a lesson I learned the hard way on Galactic Strike Force, which took me quite a few plays to really enjoy very much, though I eventually did. The end result for Spirit Island was that it was super fun for me by the second game. I'm really looking forward to more.

My favorite parts of playing so far have been: 1) Feeling as if I am this unique spirit who is collaborating with other spirits to work to protect something I love, 2) The unfolding of the various random elements -- new powers becoming available, colonists and natives doing various things.