Horizons of Spirit Island Review – Spirit Island on a Shoestring Budget

Terraforming Mars: Ares Edition and Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion both excellently streamlined their big-box counterparts. So my expectations for Horizons of Spirit Island could not be higher going into this review. Especially since Spirit Island is one of my favourite board games.

Unfortunately, the long and short of it is that while Horizons of Spirit Island contains most of the fun of Spirit Island at an eye-watering price. It’s mostly recycled content to attract new players, and even then I’m not sure if it’s worth it.

But before we dig into all of that, let’s quickly recap what Horizons of Spirit Island is all about.

How to play

If you’ve played the original Spirit Island, there’s nothing new for you here—Horizons plays exactly the same. But if you haven’t had the pleasure of diving into one of the greatest cooperative games of the last decade, here’s how it works:

You’re a spirit of nature with one goal: kick the colonisers off your island. Using your growing arsenal of powers and the help of the native Dahan population, you’ll drive the invaders back into the sea. Victory comes when you destroy enough towns and cities or scare them so badly they won’t dare return.

Each round starts with your spirit growing stronger. During this phase, you’ll make two key decisions:

1. Growth Options
   Pick one of three choices, they’re unique to each spirit but typically offer some combination of:
   • Gaining new power cards to expand your abilities.
   • Spreading your presence across the island, increasing your range.
   • Reclaiming cards from your discard pile to play them again.
2. Income or Card Play
   A less nuanced but equally vital choice: increase your energy income (used to play cards) or the number of cards you can play each turn.

Once you’ve made your growth decisions, it’s time to act. You’ll play cards from your hand to unleash your powers. These might damage invaders, move the Dahan, reposition colonisers, or terrify invaders into retreat. Cards are either fast (activating immediately) or slow (activating after the invaders’ turn), so timing your actions is critical.

Each card also comes with elemental icons. If you collect enough icons of the right type, you’ll trigger your spirit’s passive abilities—unleashing even more chaos on the invaders.

After you’ve made your move, the invaders take their turn, wreaking havoc across the island in three phases. Thankfully, you get fair warning: their actions follow a predictable cycle of exploring, building, and ravaging.

• Explore: Invaders scout new lands, sending explorers to any space connected to their current holdings.
• Build: If invaders are present on a space, they expand, adding new buildings.
• Ravage: Invaders attack, damaging the land and any Dahan in their space. They may even cause blight, which spells disaster for the island and can lose you the game.

After the invaders finish their mayhem, you can finally activate your slow powers, ideally undoing their progress and setting the stage for your next turn.

You win by driving the invaders off your island—either by destroying their towns and cities or scaring them so much they pack up and leave. But beware: if the island suffers too much blight or the invaders overrun you, it’s game over.

The brilliance of Horizons of Spirit Island lies in its balance. As the game progresses, your powers grow stronger, but the invaders become increasingly aggressive. It’s a race to outmanoeuvre them, and every decision feels like it could tip the scales in your favour – or send the island spiralling into ruin.

Horizons of Spirit Island vs Spirit Island

The biggest change in Horizons of Spirit Island is cost. That seems to be the brief the production team got, and they nailed it. Cutting every corner they could find and bringing the price down to a third of the original game (half if you’re in Australia).

Here is how they did it:

• Replaced the invaders’ plastic miniatures with cardboard tokens.
• Replaced the wooden Dahan pieces with cardboard tokens.
• Removed the thick cardboard stock on spirit cards.
• Reduced size of the Spirit boards.
• No new fear, minor, or major power cards – all taken from previous versions of Spirit Island.
• Removed blighted island cards and adversary cards.
• Reduced player count by 1, Horizons of Spirit Island only supports 1-3.
• Replaced island tiles with an island board with one side for 1-2 players and the other for 3.

Now despite all of this reduction, replacements and removal, Horizons of Spirit Island is still a fine-looking game. It looks and feels in line with any other board game you pull off of the shelf.

The only issue I took with this production is the new spirit boards. Given that these are the main attraction for experienced players, I was hoping I’d seamlessly be able to incorporate them into my copy of the original. But they’ve done us dirty by making them extremely thin; like one-ply toilet paper to the original’s three-ply. Making them feel out of place in the bigger box.

Fortunately, Greater than Games is more than happy to upsell you matching spirit boards from their web store.

Another notable difference is that Horizons of Spirit Island is aimed at new players. A lot of the complexity of the original has been stripped out, making it a great starting point if you’re new to the series. The rule book is also much-improved from the original, and the addition of a quick start guide means you can begin playing as soon as possible.

However, by reducing the complexity, the replayability of the game also goes way down. While there are some novel ideas within the spirits. Such as the Sun-Bright Whirlwind who focuses on helping other players, and the Fathomless Mud of the Swamp which stops invaders from building towns and cities on your Sacred Sites. They’re all simple to control, and as a result, don’t feel as exciting or unique as the ones found in the original.

Why you don’t need this game

Horizons of Spirit Island wasn’t made for long-term fans, with 98% of the content recycled from previous incarnations. Unless you’re a completionist or sycophant, wanting to collect all the spirits, you don’t need this game.

Things get murkier if you’re new to the franchise.

Horizons of Spirit Island is the best and cheapest way to try out one of the greatest board games on the market. Where even though you’re missing all the bells and whistles of the original, there’s enough here to see if you like the game. Additionally, there’s been a lot of work done to make it as easy to pick up as possible.

The problem is if you play Horizons of Spirit Island and enjoy it. Without the blighted island cards, adversary cards, and additional spirits, there’s not much replayability. So after a couple of plays, you’re likely to rush out and buy the original so that you can play more. In doing so though, you’re essentially buying Spirit Island twice. This means you’re better off saving your money and just buying the original.

This is why, despite my enjoyment, I don’t think anyone should buy this game. Not because the game is awful, or there’s anything wrong with it, but as a consumer, it doesn’t make economic sense.