In Board Royale: The Island, Resources Equal Survival

Arvis Games

A new game seeking funding on Kickstarter starting today is Board Royale: The Island by Arvis Games, which aims to reflect a competitive survival scenario as seen in films like Battle Royale and The Hunger Games. You’re dropped onto a deserted island and need to fight for your very life—but in a surprising and welcome twist, the art direction here is bright and colorful and not at all disturbing despite the gritty theme, making it playable by gamers young and old. I should note that I have not played the game myself yet, and the information I have is based on the public beta version of the rulebook (PDF link), but so far it sounds appealing. It’s a simple, accessible card game that can appeal to a variety of players and should be a great addition to future game nights.

Most noncooperative tabletop games have a “last man standing” win condition where you have to eliminate the other players before they do the same to you, so the premise makes sense on its own. But one thing Board Royale does differently is focus heavily on the resource management inherent to the survival theme, borrowing a mechanic from the staple board game Settlers of Catan, while incorporating it into an entirely different play design. In Board Royale, each player draws resources into their hand, such as wood, stone, and iron. Each turn, the active player may either draw two cards from the resource deck or steal a random resource from an opponent’s hand. Resources are spent to acquire or “craft” items from a communal Crafting Field and also to activate the abilities of items they have already crafted, such as attacking opponents and dealing damage, which is represented by making the opponent discard resources from their hand. If a player runs out of resources, they are defeated, as they no longer have the means to protect themselves.

If you are a nonaggressive type and prefer to survive without killing anyone, there is another option: escape. While removing resources from opponents’ hands is a big part of Board Royale, you do not have to do this with the sole intent of winning the game in this way. You can attack simply to strip opponents of the means of doing the same to you. Whereas winning with an attack strategy requires you to drain the resources of all players, items with the Escape type give you points that can lead to an escape attempt. If you reach 10 points’ worth of Escape items, you escape the island and win the game.

Games with simple mechanics like these lend themselves particularly well to expansions, and Arvis Games is prepared with several additions that can allow players to customize their experience. They have a dirty NSFW expansion, an explosive Military expansion, a crafty Skills expansion, and a tragic Disaster expansion, all of which will be unlocked via funds gathered through Kickstarter. For an early look at Board Royale, you can visit the official website here. The Kickstarter campaign ends on October 5, 2019.