Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island Review

Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island is a cooperative worker placement game.

Title: Robinson Crusoe: Adventure of the Cursed Island

Year Published: 2012

Designer: Ignacy Trzewiczek

Publisher: Z-Man Games

Players: 1-4

Game Time: ~120 Mins

Set-up Time: >10 Mins

Ages: 10+

Theme: Robinson Crusoe

Mechanic: Cooperative, Worker Placement

How to win: Complete the Scenario objective.

Game Description

Players are taken to a deserted island, where they’ll play the parts of shipwrecked survivors confronted by an extraordinary adventure. They’ll be faced with the challenges of building a shelter, finding food, fighting wild beasts, and protecting themselves from weather changes. 

Brief Set-Up & Game Play

More detail is added to the round-up below…

Set-up is quite detailed and depends on which scenario you pick but you’ll have different action cards and a board to explore.

Players place action pawns on actions to hunt, build defences and tools as well as explore. They’re not just battling hunger and the local wildlife, but also the weather, both hot and cold. Food spoils too so hunger is an issue unless the food is canned or can be stored somewhere cool enough.

Game End

If one player dies, or you complete the Scenario the game will end.

Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island Round-Up

Each turn starts with reading the top card of the Event deck. It may not always be an Event as Adventure cards can get shuffled in here. The backs are different so you know one is on the way and you really start to fear which of the Adventure cards it is…

After the Morale and Production phase is the best bit, the Action Phase.

Actions

This is where you place your action tokens to do things but there is so much to balance here…

Firstly, do you put 1 token on each of the 2 actions and spread your workload but potentially fail and even get hurt? Or do you put both your action disks on 1 action, and pass it automatically but miss out on doing other things? These ‘things’ that you need to do are…

Deal with the Threat action, or face a bad Event in a turn or two.

Build Shelter, Roofs, Palisades and Weapons to protect yourself from Beast attacks and bad weather.

Build Items to help yourself on the Island.

Gather resources to build with as well as get food to eat to stay alive.

Explore the Island to find more resources and terrain types.

Rearrange the camp to help morale.

Also, sometimes you just need to Rest.

Too Many Tasks

You always need to do all of these, all the time, at every turn and they’re not just enough actions to do it. But, if you fail, you could take damage, you could draw an adventure card and you could waste that action by failing… It’s very hard to decide on what exactly is the right thing to do.

Even if you diversify and pass at everything and you’re feeling good, the Weather phase will come and literally blow all your confidence away… You can lose food, health and shelter here… time to rebuild?

Finally, it’s Nighttime and we all gotta eat right? No food = take damage.

Rating

Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island is a brutal co-op game but very thematic and a lot of fun.

I give it 8/10

Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island Initial Review January 2014

Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island was high up on my “want to play” list…

I have now played it, and will again.

I heard how Ignacy Trzewiczek is a guy who makes ‘Games that tell stories’, this is how some of that storytelling works.

You need food, 1 per player, per turn. You have fish, fruit, and meat from animals which gives you enough food for 2 days. Yay!

But on this hot Island, you know what you don’t have? A fridge.

So food spoils after a day, excellent. But, if you explore and find a tile that has a river, you can build a dam which can be used to keep food cooled and last longer.

Genius.

I love this game!

Jesta ThaRogue