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Fruit Island is Klassic Knizia in all the right ways. It is rules light with a great push your luck mechanic. Despite coming with a bag and the chits to fill it, it's not a bag builder, because the bag is filled at the beginning of the game with all of the chits. On your turn, you draw a chit from the bag. If it is a fruit, you place it on a tree of that type. Then, you move up to three spaces with your Monkey. If you end at the base of a tree, you can take its fruit and set it face up in your personal cache. If it is a gorilla token, you move the gorilla according to what is indicated on the chit....and keep drawing chits until you pull a fruit. If the gorilla passes on a space with a monkey, he stops and steals all of the face up fruit from that monkey.
The Trading post puts the Guerrilla in the Gorilla Fruitfare of Fruit Island. Any time you make your way to the Trading Post in the middle of the map, you can “bank” any face-up fruit so that it can't be taken. Of course, that means spending a couple of rounds to get to the Trading Post and then getting back out to the where the goodies are.Edit: With respect to the gorrila’s movement: there was an error in the rules, in that it stops on the first space occupied by a monkey, even if it’s allowed movement would normally take it further. Which changes the game's choices of “What are the odds the Gorilla is going to land directly on me?” to "Oh, I'm safe here because I currently have someone between me and the Gorilla." Which, honestly, ups the influnce (if not interaction) of the other players, But the crux is still " Bank too often and you won't have enough total fruits to win. Don't bank enough (or not at all) and you could end up losing a huge batch of fruit."
Not only does the Gorilla play the linebacker that sacks you and takes all of your fruit but he also does double duty as a lineman, since you can't move past him to get fruit, or (equally as important) move past him to get to the trading post. The gorilla chits that are drawn move him a random number of spaces and, sometimes, reverse his direction. It is the chaos fuel that keeps Fruit Island from ever feeling stale.
The simplicity of the gameplay had me saying “This would be a great game kids game!”And I kept saying that after each game. And I kept playing it...over and over again. But, the thing is, I kept playing it without kids because it's that damn fun. So, the * behind the title of “Great for Kids” is because I assume it would be great for kids, even if we didn't actually get around to playing it with them because I was busy playing it with adults.
If I have one complaint about Fruit Island is that the Gorilla Meeple is a bit unstable. He's huge when compared to the monkey meeples but has the same base width, so he tends to fall over if you don't play close attention when moving/placing him. I've been tempted to whip out Huge Baby from Magical Athlete (if you know, you know.) and have a Huge Baby Fruit Island cross-over (HUGE BABY NEEDS APPLE SAUCE!). (Edit: I should note that this was a pre-production copy and Analog Game Studios stated via e-mail The gorilla will be widened rather than reduced in size, because we like its imposing stature." So, same great size, with a more stable base)
Fruit Island is an excellent example of Reiner Knizia taking a simple premise and basic gameplay and weaving it into a delightful package of entertainment. It ranks up there with L.L.A.M.A Dice and Fruit Fight as a Knizia 15 minute filler that is more than just fruit filling.
A review copy of this release was provided by the publisher. Therewillbe.games would like to thank them for their support.
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