Description

In Island of Gems, you are decorating the beaches of the Gem Islands to entice visiting tourists. Enlist in the help of magical seahorses that give you extra victory points and encounter scuba divers that allow you to alter the board.

Fight the incoming tide every three turns while you alternate moves in this highly strategic duel game. Sometimes the tide carries in diamonds, requiring you to decide when and where to focus the most attention. Earn the most seashells and win the favor of the inhabitants of the Gem Islands!

Your turn is simple. You will place one of your gems on an open space of one of the islands available. The island you are sent to depends on where the previous gem was placed. Picture each island as a representation of the whole 3x3 board. Whichever of the nine spaces are chosen is the island that the next gem must be placed. For instance, the blue gem is placed on the middle right space of the island. This means that the next gem will be played on the middle right island. This will continue until all 27 gems have been placed.

Battle it out with your rival islander to complete patterns, control each of the islands and recruit seahorses.

Every game is different! With 14 islands to choose from, no two games will ever be the same. Seahorse cards score in two different ways from the orientation of the player, meaning any one card has different value for both players!

Tide cards dictate the flow of the game, either flooding an island or revealing diamonds that can lead to victory.

—description from the designer

• Cardboard Edison Runner-Up 2022
• LUCI Award Finalist 2022
• Board Game Design Lab Challenge Runner-Up 2019
• Note: This game is completely changed from its 2019 iteration. While using some mechanics from the old version, Island of Gems in its current state has been adapted for 2 players with fundamental scoring changes and differences in components, component count and presentation. For the purpose of BoardGames, this is still considered related to its old version but the similarities are very minimal. The videos on the BoardGames page reflect its old iteration and not the new one. This is a complete rehaul. The game was an attempted KS that I cancelled and no copies of this game have been sold as this game is still looking for a publisher.