Survive the Island Components Overview and Impressions

I’m not sure what it is with board game publishers and comically large boxes, but Survive the Island might have the biggest box when compared to the games included components, although I think I know the reason for that. That said, the production quality here is phenomenal, and for under $40 CAD, it’s an incredible value from a production standpoint!

Ok let’s get the comically large box out of the way first. It’s massive, with deep spaces to hold the games meeples and monsters, a cool storage solution for the included wooden raft pieces, and great slots to hold hexagonal tiles. The insert itself is spectacular, it’s just so dang big! Honestly, I think it’s because the board needs to fit in the box, and the board is nice and large to make playing the game more enjoyable. But a much thinner box could have been produced for this, at least in my opinion.

Unless there is a plan for a ton of expansions for this game, and they are future proofing the base game for that, I don’t see why we would need this so large!

But as I said above, the production value here is phenomenal. The tile pieces are nice, thick cardboard tiles, which feel great to hold and place, and come in different thicknesses to indicate different train types. They pop nicely when placed on the central board, which I think was a design voice because as tiles sink below the surface of the water, you remove one type before an other, etc.

Also included are a ton of great little player pieces. These are meant to represent the survivors on the island – they are all made of wood, and have little numbers printed on them to indicate the number of points you will get if you safely evacuate them. And how do you do that? Using the included wooden rafts of course! Each raft has a number of different slots to hold survivors from all players. I think about how easily these rafts could have just been cardboard tiles, but the production team has gone above and beyond to make them wood.

The wooden monster meeples are also exceptional – nice and chunky, and beautifully screen printed.

I don’t think Survive the Island is an overly complex board game, but the components give it a premium feel none-the-less. I’m looking forward to playing this one, and cannot wait to see how it presents when mid-game on the table!