Welcome to Food Chain Island, where you want to be the predator, and not the prey.
What Is Food Chain Island?
Food Chain Island is a solo-only card game, for ages 8 and up, that takes about 10-20 minutes to play. It’s designed by Scott Almes and published by Button Shy, with illustrations by Annie Wilkinson. You can purchase the game directly from Button Shy for $12. This is the first game published in Button Shy’s simply solo series of games.
Food Chain Island Components
Like all Button Shy games, Food Chain Island comes packaged in a highly durable vinyl wallet. Inside that wallet, you will find only 18 cards along with a fold-out rules pamphlet. It might not seem like much, but this game delivers a full meal despite its limited components. In Food Chain Island, 16 of the cards are land animals (well, one of them is a plant) while the last 2 cards are sea animals. The land animals are numbered 0 through 15 and each card is illustrated with an animal devouring the animal (or plant) shown on the card that is one number less than it. Additionally, there is a special ability listed on each card. The 2 sea animals are the shark and the whale, and each one provides a one time opportunity to break the rules of the game if you find yourself in a bind.
How to Play Food Chain Island
The Goal
The goal of the game is to to maneuver the animals, feasting on one card at a time, and trying to get down to the fewest cards possible.
Setup
To setup a game of Food Chain Island, shuffle the 16 animal cards together and then lay them faceup in a 4 x 4 grid. Place the 2 sea animal cards to the side. Then let the meal begin!
Gameplay
During your turn, choose 1 animal to eat another and then activate that animal’s special ability. Each animal can typically eat the animals valued within three numbers less of it. For example, the fox (number 9), can eat the animals valued 6, 7, and 8. That’s right, no 7 ate 9 jokes in this game. The only exceptions are the ant (number 1) which can only eat the plant (number 0), and the spider (number 2) which can only eat the ant and the plant. To eat an animal, move 1 space orthogonally, placing the higher value card on top of the lower value one. Afterwards, trigger the ability on that card. These abilities range and will alter how the next card pounces. For instance, you might need to move diagonally to chomp on the prey, or jump over one animal to gobble another.
If you find yourself stuck, look to the sea. The shark allows an animal to move 1 space to eat an animal of any lower value while the whale moves an animal to any other unoccupied space. After using either of these abilities, flip the card over.
Game End
Continue your feeding frenzy until there are no more legal moves. Then count up how many animals are still alive. If 3 or less have survived, you win! Clean plate club!
Growing Your Island
If 18 cards isn’t enough for you, Food Chain Island has 3 mini expansions – Friendly Waters, Tough Skies, and Lost Beasts. The Friendly Waters expansion adds 3 new sea animal cards. Shuffle them with the original 2 and then draw 2 to use for that game. If you want to alter the games difficulty, give yourself more or fewer sea animals. The dolphin moves an animal 1 space to eat, but you place the predator below the prey instead. The octopus discards an unstacked animal and activates its ability. And lastly, the manta ray prevents the next predator’s ability from triggering.
Tough Skies adds a little more challenge to Food Chain Island by introducing the owl, buzzard, and eagle. Shuffle these 3 birds together and draw 1 to use during the game. If you want to up the difficulty, use more than one. Each bird adds a condition that must be met to win the game. To satisfy the buzzard, you must activate predators with odd numbers three times in a row. The eagle swoops in when there are 9 or fewer animals left and requires you to take 3 animals in a row, shuffle them, and place them back out into the original spaces. Finally, the owl wants you to shuffle a stack of three or more animals, and then randomly place one of them back in the same space while discarding the rest of the stack.
The third expansion, Lost Beasts, brings prehistoric creatures to your island. Plesiosaurus is a sea animal that can be mixed in with the rest of the water friends. It’s ability allows an animal to move 1 space to eat, including prey that is valued up to 2 more than itself. The pterodactyl joins the air animals and brings a new challenge that requires the next two predator’s values to equal 13 exactly. Then there are four new land animals – velociraptor, archicebus, dodo, and smilodon. These are mixed into the original 16 land animals and some new layouts are provided for a 20 card setup. Unlike the other land animals that have abilities which trigger when they eat, these lost beasts have specific dietary needs that must be met for them to earn their meal. For example, the velociraptor can only eat prey valued 1 less or 1 more than itself while the dodo eats any even numbered prey that’s less than 7, including 0.
Why You Should Play Food Chain Island
There is something extremely charming about Button Shy’s micro games and their ability to create fun, dynamic puzzles using only 18 cards. I have played several of them now and despite the 18 card restriction, Button Shy creates solid, unique games. Considering that they release a new game monthly, the diversity of mechanics and themes in their catalog is extremely impressive. I know that these aren’t your epic, table sprawling, miniature heavy games, or even your super crunchy euro games, but their simplicity is what makes them so good. Not to mention the fact that you can slip them into your pocket to have on the go.
Food Chain Island reminds me of those triangular wooden peg board games you find at Cracker Barrel restaurants. You know, the one with 15 holes, but only 14 pegs, and the goal is to try and get down to as few pegs as possible by jumping and removing pegs. To be clear, it is only reminiscent of that game in the fact that the end goals are similar – try to get down to the fewest cards left on the board. But while the triangle game is like an appetizer, Food Chain Island offers so much more.
First, it’s not easy to fit that piece of wood and pegs into your pocket. But Food Chain Island slides right in. You will barely even know it’s there. That’s why you should always take it with you whenever you travel. Despite the length of trip, throw this little wallet game in your bag, duffel, or pocket because if you find yourself with a spare 15 minutes, you can play it. And Button Shy’s games are also perfect for traveling because of their durability. They can withstand any environment you might find yourself in.
Next, this little game offers a plate full of replayability. Every deal of the cards offers a new layout of animals, and thus, a new challenge. Adding in some of the small expansions allows you to tweak that even more. And for those wanting to increase the difficulty, the rules have alternate starting patterns besides the 4×4 standard grid. All of this combines into endless enjoyment of animal dining.
On top of the quick, puzzly gameplay, I also adore the artwork by Annie Wilkinson. The animal snacking on animal pictures border on the macabre, however, the lack of bloody details along with the cartoonish depiction of X’s for dead animal eyes provides just the right amount of seasoning for this game. Additionally, the graphic design is simple and perfect. Each type of card is bold background colors so there is no confusions. And the rule for each animal is right there on its card, in a font that is easily readable.
All of these factors puts Food Chain Island at the top of the menu for me. And if you like Food Chain Island, check out the review of Ugly Gryphon Inn, another simply solo game by Button Shy.
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