Board Game Review – Isle of Cats – Home

I signed up to the Kickstarter for this game. Having never pledged on kickstarter before, I was apprehensive, but after the product arrived was so glad that I did! It’s a beautiful product, and I got a few of the extras from the kickstarter too which added to it!

You are citizens of Squall’s 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 need to manage resources as you draft cards to explore the island, rescue cats, find treasures, befriend Oshax and read ancient lessons. Each lesson you collect will give you another personal way of scoring points, in addition to filling your boat and keeping cat families together!

Something that I keep coming back to with this game is the artwork. The cat artwork is lovely, in such I find myself favouring certain pieces just to have that specific cat on my boat!

The gameplay is fairly simple, collect cats and place the tiles on your boat, trying to fill the boat and keep the cats in their “families” (colour groups). Try to complete the lessons along the way and get bonus points for doing so! More cats doesn’t always mean more points, as the lessons can influence how many of each cat family you need for example.

I’ve played this game as a 2 player most often, with it being suitable for 2-4 players, and with showing a few friends how to play when we’ve had visitors, and they have all picked it up fairly quickly. Like many games I own and play, easy to learn, difficult to master! It does however come with Family Rules, allowing you to strip some of the more complicated rules which is fantastic, and also a Solo Mode, so you can play alone!

The box comes with a handy space to keep your own cat during the game too, not that we’ve had any luck getting the cat to sit where it should!