Spirit Island

Quick Gameplay Summary

• You choose a Spirit, each with its own player board, starting powers, growth options, and presence tracks.
• Each round follows a structure: Growth phase, Fast Powers, Invader phase where they Explore, Build, and Ravage, then Slow Powers.
• Invaders spread across the island using a deck that determines which lands activate.
• You generate Fear by destroying towns and cities, which unlocks Fear cards and lowers the victory threshold.
• You win either by eliminating all invaders or by generating enough Fear to unlock a lower tier victory condition or my going through the entire fear deck.
• If the island becomes too Blighted, you lose all your Spirit Presense or a loss condition triggers from an Adversary, you lose.

What I Like About Spirit Island

A Master Class In Deep Asymmetry:

art by joshua wright

The coolest thing about Spirit Island is easily the asymmetry. Every Spirit plays wildly differently and actually feels different vs just being a slight variation. Lightning’s Swift Strike uses it’s lightning offensively going after the invaders directly while Ocean’s Hungry Grasp literally pulls invaders into the sea and drowns them for energy. Thunderspeaker feels massive and powerful but slower and more deliberate. They are not just mechanically different, they have moods and thematic trappings that is more than what you see in a lot of games. They have identity. That part of the design is incredible and probably the biggest reason the game has the reputation it does.

Power Progression Feels Earned:

You start the game feeling weak and overwhelmed. The invaders are spreading, building, ravaging, and you are barely holding on. Then over time you unlock Major Powers that completely shift the board state both through your spirit directly or through cards you draft. The arc from scrambling survival to unleashing something massive (can be) extremely satisfying.

Scalable Difficulty Done Right:

For someone who doesn’t love this game as a holy grail like many others… this is probably the thing I respect most about the design. The game is highly scalable. You can add Adversaries or even mix them, change the default map to be more difficult, and some other micro ways to adjust the difficulty with things introduced through expansion. There is a numeric system that gives you an understanding of just how hard the game gets (I read the highest is 39, but I think most people play on the basic 0-11 scale? – I don’t own the game, so I actually don’t know this by heart). I am on the record many times saying that I actually think replayability is a little overrated in general. I am perfectly happy playing a game ten times and moving on. BUT… when a game has replay-ability, especially in the sense of difficulty scaling, it definitely is a much welcome addition. Scalable difficulty that feels earned and balanced is one of the best features a solo game can have, and Spirit Island absolutely nails that.

Deterministic Gameplay With Real Agency:

There is very little randomness compared to many co-ops. The invader deck is known information. Powers do exactly what they say. You have the tools to solve the puzzle. Beyond cards being randomized, there isn’t too much you can’t prepare for or expect out of the game. For people who dislike swingy randomness, this is probably ideal. The flip side (see below) is that when you lose, it feels like you did something wrong. You had the information. You had the options. That razor’s edge can be satisfying or brutal depending on your mindset.

The Anti-Colonial Theme Is Actually Reinforced Mechanically:

Instead of colonizing land, you are defending it. The invaders are plastic pieces while the spirits, Dahan, and natural elements are wood and cardboard. It is subtle but effective. The production reinforces the theme in a way that feels intentional rather than cosmetic. This is not something I ever noticed until it was pointed out to me but it’s a neat thing none-the-less.

Multiple Win And Loss Conditions Add Texture:

The fear mechanic changes the goalposts a bit of when and how you can win. Your goal starts by eliminating ALL the invaders, but as you progress the fear, it lowers the bar of how much you need to clear by making lesser and lesser types of invaders required for winning. You also have multiple ways of losing, such as losing from blight or running out of cards or a complete destruction of your spirit presence. There are even more ways with the adversaries but these considerations do make your spirit synergy take you down alternate paths to winning and give them more focus and creativity with their design.

What I Don’t Like About Spirit Island

The Learning Curve Is Steeper Than I Want:

First, this will be one of many things that don’t make sense when you compare my other tastes and likes and compare them directly to others. But, for Spirit Island specifically… I think my analysis brain kicks in too hard with this game. Especially when playing two or three Spirits, which is how I prefer to play. If you do not have the powers memorized (which I don’t), forward planning becomes much harder. You are choosing growth options and power gains without fully internalizing what is in the deck or the best direction to play the game. That creates this weird loop of uncertainty where you are not sure which direction to commit to. There are players who have their spirits “build order” considered before they even start the game (at least, from what I’ve seen) and there is something about that doesn’t click with me.

I genuinely think players with 50 or 100 plays under their belt have a dramatically easier time because they have internalized the ecosystem of powers. If you do not, it can feel overwhelming. That’s probably true with all games but it feels very focused here simply because this game is so popular already.

Upkeep and Maintenance Can Drag:

There is a lot of upkeep. Invader steps, fear generation, blight checks, moving pieces, tracking fast and slow phases. In multiplayer I often find myself hoping that the bookkeeping gets spread out. It is not unbearable, but it is constant. This isn’t anywhere near as bad as say Gloomhaven when it’s a game that isn’t my favorite already, it becomes a negative footnote. I imagine though this is not true for all players and some will disagree with me here. (It could also be that the copy I routinely play is someone elses that has all the expansions mixed in).

Fast and Slow Phases Are Easy to Mess Up:

This is mostly a me issue and relevant to solo, but the Fast and Slow timing structure is clever, but early on it is very easy to mis-sequence something or to play out a turn just to realize you mis-read a power or card. That adds to the cognitive load and mistakes in this game can be very punishing early on.

Anticlimactic Endings at Lower Difficulties:

This is a big one for me. Because you often start from a losing position, there is a point midgame where it suddenly feels like you cannot lose anymore and you are mostly playing through the motions of the game. Once your power level crosses a certain threshold, the invaders are sort of reacting to you instead of the other way around. At base difficulty that tipping point can feel guaranteed and way early in the game’s runtime. I suspect harder Adversary levels push that tension further into the late game, but I have not consistently played at those levels enough to fully test that. Especially in multi-player. I imagine, if I put in the effort to learn the game and play it higher difficuties… may rating for the game might increase… but I just haven’t done that.

Quarterbacking Is Absolutely Possible:

This one is nitpicky – not specifically from the game but people who talk about the game. A lot of people claim this game has no quarterbacking. That has not been my experience. I have played with people who have dozens of plays and they absolutely try to steer the table in a direction. With friends and strangers alike at a meetup. If everyone is equally new, sure, that controlling dynamic is minimized. But once experience levels differ, it changes. I have definitely seen alpha tendencies at the table, ESPECIALLY if you are playing with any of the advanced spirits.

Multiplayer Can Feel Like Stepping on Toes:

This is probably my biggest issue in multiplayer as for some reason, I’ve experienced it more than once. Because planning is simultaneous and there is no strict turn structure, two players can build toward a big moment and then one resolves first and invalidates the other’s move. It becomes a subtle politics moment of who goes first or having to discuss who will do what and usually the more vocal person drives the decision. I have seen this happen often enough that it makes multiplayer less enjoyable for me compared to solo. It may smooth out at higher difficulties with a consistent group or on the harder map.. but I have rarely had the same group push into that challenge space to truly know. Maybe one day I’ll have the time and effort to find a group of people who want to tackle harder difficulties.

True Solo Is Fine, But Not My Favorite Way to Play:

You can absolutely play one Spirit (aka True Solo), and it works cleanly. I just do not find it as interesting. Two or three Spirits feel more dynamic, even if they amplify analysis paralysis. The combo potential and weakness covering aspects of the asymmetrical spirits is just too well designed for my tastes to play with one Spirit. There are other better True Solo games out there.

Final Thoughts

This is a weird one for me.

I completely understand why Spirit Island is considered one of the best solo and cooperative games ever made (and I give it a tier-ranking accordingly). It is extremely well designed. The asymmetry is brilliant. The scaling difficulty is *chefs kiss*. The power curve is (mostly) satisfying. The theme is integrated in a way that feels meaningful if you put the thought into it and read up on the Spirits (the wiki helps with this).

And yet, when I play it, I do not have as much fun as I do with other games. That’s the bottom line for me. I’ll write it again just so it’s clear.

I simply just do not have as much fun as I do with other board games.

Part of that is probably familiarity. I do not own it. I do not have the powers memorized. The naming and wording of powers sometimes feels unintuitive to me. I suspect that if I put in 20 or more focused plays to the game it might start creeping up but there is just something about this game that makes me not enjoy it as much as everyone else. I wish I could articulate this point better. From the starting from a losing position aspect to the way major power cards work… I just don’t enjoy it as much as others. Which is a shame because the Spirits are really cool designed.

Right now though, I respect it more than I love it.

For solo, I rate it higher than multiplayer. For multiplayer, the quarterbacking potential and stepping on toes have consistently dampened my experience. Maybe those were isolated experiences, I don’t know.

It is the kind of game I want to revisit, which I will likely do with the Steam version when I get the time to myself to dive deeper into it. It is absolutely an S tier game for many people and Iw ill rate it as such. For me, it just has not crossed that line yet of being a favorite despite it’s great gameplay.