Isle of Bears

• Designer: Daisy Yi-Ching Chen 
• Publisher: Heybye Gaming
• Players: 2
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Isle of Bears is a two-player card-driven abstract strategy game set in the summer of 2050, when Arctic sea ice has nearly disappeared. A group of homeless white bears drifts across the ocean in search of a new home and reaches a group of islands already occupied by black bears.  Every summer may be the coolest summer of the rest of your life. How will we survive?

To start, place the 4 tiles together to form a 4×4 grid.  Mix up all the bears and place one randomly on each space.  Each player controls one color of bears and a deck of action cards – these are shuffled and 3 are placed face up on the table. 

On your turn, play one of three face-up cards to move, stack, swap, gather, scatter, push, or remove bears. Bears sharing the same space move together, and bears can stack on top of one another. The color of the top bear determines which player controls that space.

If six or more bears occupy the same space after an action is resolved, overcrowding occurs and the active player removes all opposing bears in that space from the game. Islands with no bears remaining sink and are removed from play.  Finally, discard all the cards you used this turn and then refill your hand to 3 cards.

A player wins immediately when every occupied space is controlled by the same color, meaning that the top bear in every remaining stack belongs to that player.

My thoughts on the game

This is a nice little two player duel with action going back and forth each turn.  Despite the cuteness of the different shaped bears, it’s an abstract at heart – you could just as easily be moving around discs or cubes or whatever.

The strategy is all based around making the most out of your three action card selection – which varies throughout the game.  Additionally, as the hands are open, opponents can also evaluate what actions each has available and make plans accordingly.

There are certainly enough card options in the game, but blissfully the hand limit of 3 keeps the analysis time fairly short.  The two exceptions to this rule are the card that lets you use the action of one of your opponent’s face up cards and the one which allows you to take two actions from your face up choices (possibly doing the same one twice).  But, even with these exceptions, the game is pretty snappy – I’ve rarely played a game that has taken more than ten minutes.

The game might benefit from a player aid, but once you have played the game a few times, the cards become easy to remember.

As you play, just make sure that you keep ownership of enough stacks to actually do something.  In general, only the owner of a stack can move it – so you’ll want some choices available for your turn.  Even a single bear can be strong because if it can jump on a tall stack, it takes control of it – and heck, even a single addition might be enough to trigger a culling from overpopulation.

Isle of Bears is a nice compact 2-player abstract with interesting action cards.  The bears themselves are quite cute, and as long as you and your opponent don’t mind killing off these cute bears by drowning them in the sea – you will like this tactical duel.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale
• Neutral.
• Not for me…