Matthew Baileygame 30 of the “Bailey family sorta Summer Board Game Bonanza” is “Isle of Cats Explore and Draw” played by Myself, Jack(7) and Toby(4).
“Isle of Cats Explore and Draw” is essentially “Isle of Cats roll n write (or flip n write)”. If you have mised it before I have reviewed Isle of Cats before a couple of times (might play again this Summer) and the boys love it. It’s Toby’s(4) favourite game.
You start by getting your own boat and you then lay cards out in 4 columns of 3. Each player then chooses a column (you can choose the same) and starts to fill in their boat with the shapes or picking up lessons (special scoring conditions to use at the end).
As you fill you are trying over the course of 7 rounds to cover all rooms and all rats (unless a card says otherwise).
In the end you get points for cat families of different colours, points for “lessons” and lose points for every rat showing and ever room incompleted.
This was easy to teach the boys as they are both very familiar with the original and it was a good game.
I do have some issues…
1… the yellow cats are called orange cats and have to be coloured orange even though they are clearly yellow…
2… the red and yellow pens as well as they black and purple are hard to distinguish (especially in pub light)
3.we had 2 pens without ink in
4. While i appreciate the whiteboards rather than sheets is better long term Toby accidently rubbed his off several times.
Sometimes at the end it can be hard to see where one cat ends and one cat starts especially for the kids.
Toby won with 102 then Jack woth 81 and I got 79…
For a roll n write it takes up a suprisngly large foot print… this is def not a portable game and tbh isnt drastically smaller than the base game ok the table which begs the question is this needed? It certainly isnt a portable pull out and play anywhere game.
The boys enjoyed it though as I knew they would. Is it good? Yes… but Isle of Cats is good. Sure its a little cheaper but I cant see myself every recommending this over Isle of Cats as it isnt even really that portable compared to other Roll n Write games.
So yeah… get Isle of Cats… unless you want a slightly (and i mean slightly) more portable game of Isle of Cats in which case there may be something here.
