Summary
A game for 2 – 4 players
Playing time is 20 to 30 minutes
Publisher is FunnyFox
Introduction
In Nautilus Island, you’re shipwrecked on a mysterious, deserted island. After a storm, you come across a stranded submarine, the Nautilus. Collect items from the Nautilus, store these at the right time and collect bonusses.
Can you win more points than your opponents?
Setting up the game
Place the board in the middle of the table and give each Player a Castaway marker. Place the bonus tokens next to the board, face down and turn 5 tokens face up and place one at random on each of the Camp spaces.
Sort the Porthole tokens by their number of cards and place the highest token on the top of each stack. Then sort them in descending order and place them on the board.
Shuffle the cards and place cards on the different locations on the boards.
When you play with 2 players, deal 8 stacks of 8 cards
When you play with 3 players, deal 11 stacks of 8 cards
When you play with 4 players, deal 12 stacks of 8 cards
Some stacks has to be open and some decks are closed.
Let’s play
A game of Nautilus Island is played over several rounds. The game ends when all the decks in a column is/ are empty. At that moment you will start counting points.
During a players turn you have 2 steps
1. Explore the Nautilus
2 Recover objects or store them back at your camp
During step 1 Explore the Nautilus you place your Castaway marker anywhere and the board above the Nautilus and a column of cards. The Column can’t be occupied by another player. During your next turn you place your Castaway marker on the other side of the island.
During step 2 Recover objects or store them back at your camp you may perform one of the two actions.
Action 1; Collect objects, take the top card from each stack in the column you occupy and place them into your hand
Action 2; Store objects into your camp. Place cards into your camp, that must be the same number of cards or ewer of a single color as the number of stacks in the column where your Castaway marker stands. So you can place 1, 2 or 3 cards.
Place these cards open and in front of you and group them together.
Look at the bonus tokens for the color that you’ve just placed in front of you. If it’s available, then you can take it and place it above your set. At any point you can also close the group, then you can pick up a Porthole token.
After this action, the player next to you can take a turn.
There are different bonus tokens, each of these tokens can give you extra points. Some of them are just extra Victory Points and some will double the number of the Porthole token, more you can find in the rulebook. But after 1 play you know what the bonusses are.
A Porthole token is placed on a group of cards with the same number but it gives you points at the end of the game for a group of cards.
End of the game
A game of Nautilus Island is played over several rounds. The game ends when all the decks in a column is/ are empty.
Count the points for:
-Bonus Tokens
-Porthole Tokens
-Treasures of the Nautilus cards in your hand.
The player with the most points is the winner.
Conclusion & final score
Difficulty: 1.50/ 5
Re-playability: 8
My score: 7 out of 10 dice
Nautilus Island has a very nice theme, it is really a fun family game. The rules are very easy so children can play along well too. The actions the players can perform are also very easy, you place your Castaway marker and there you take the cards or you perform actions with the cards you have in your hand. During the game, players do have to pay close attention to the tokens to receive extra points because that is what it is all about in the end.
The artwork in Nautilus Island is very nicely done, only point of improvement was the type symbol of the cards, because you have to place them on top of each other and because of that you can’t see if you already have them. A game of Nautilus Island takes about 15 to 20 min, which is excellent for this type of game.
My thanks to Funnyfox for this review copy and the opportunity to write about it.
