---
product_id: 45784355
title: "Spirit Island"
brand: "greater than games"
price: "R3232"
currency: ZAR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
category: "Greater Than Games"
url: https://www.desertcart.co.za/products/45784355-spirit-island
store_origin: ZA
region: South Africa
---

# 4 scalable difficulty levels + Adversaries 8 unique Spirits with distinct powers Endless replayability with modular boards Spirit Island

**Brand:** greater than games
**Price:** R3232
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Summary

> 🌿 Defend your island, dominate your game night!

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Spirit Island by greater than games
- **How much does it cost?** R3232 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.co.za](https://www.desertcart.co.za/products/45784355-spirit-island)

## Best For

- greater than games enthusiasts

## Why This Product

- Trusted greater than games brand quality
- Free international shipping included
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## Key Features

- • **Solo or Squad Ready:** Seamlessly switch between solo play or team up with up to 3 friends for dynamic game nights.
- • **Mastermind Your Strategy:** Dive into deep cooperative gameplay that rewards teamwork and tactical planning.
- • **Tailored Challenge Levels:** From beginner-friendly to expert mode, customize difficulty with 4 levels and optional Adversaries.
- • **Award-Winning & Expandable:** Join a top-rated community and expand your adventure with official expansions for endless fun.
- • **Infinite Island Variations:** Experience fresh strategic challenges every session with modular island layouts and Spirit combos.

## Overview

Spirit Island is a critically acclaimed cooperative strategy board game for 1-4 players, featuring 8 unique Spirits with distinct powers, 4 difficulty levels, and modular island boards that ensure high replayability. Designed for ages 14+, it offers 90-120 minutes of immersive gameplay that challenges players to work together to repel invading colonizers. Perfect for solo or group play, Spirit Island is celebrated for its deep strategy, thematic richness, and expandable content.

## Description

Spirit Island is a complex cooperative board game for 1 to 4 players in which players take on the roles of different Spirits of the land, defending their island home from colonizing invaders. Unlike most games where you play the conquering force, Spirit Island flips the script: you are the ancient, powerful spirit defending your homeland. The invaders arrive each round, spreading and building settlements — and it's your job to use your unique spiritual powers to drive them out before the island is overrun. Each Spirit has its own unique set of powers, growth mechanics, and playstyle, ranging from the fast-acting Lightning's Swift Strife to the slow but unstoppable Vital Strength of the Earth. Players must coordinate their powers strategically, managing fear and blight across the island's territories. With 8 different Spirits, multiple Adversary factions (each with 6 escalating difficulty levels), and modular island boards, Spirit Island offers enormous replayability. Whether you're playing solo or with a full group of 4, no two games ever feel the same. Spirit Island is widely regarded as one of the best solo board games for adults, one of the best cooperative strategy board games, and one of the most thematically rich board games ever designed. Expand your island with official expansions: Branch & Claw, Jagged Earth, Horizons of Spirit Island, and Nature Incarnate — all fully compatible with the base game. Players: 1–4 | Play Time: 90–120 minutes | Ages: 14+ | Complexity: Medium-High

Review: Perfect for skilled gamers, whether solo or up to four players. - It has a bit of a learning curve because of the complexity, but the complexity is what I enjoy most about it so I'm fine with the learning curve. It's well-balanced, with some luck involved because of card draws but not often unwinnable. The games where you have bad luck, you just have to have better strategy (sometimes just try to stay alive until the luck balances out). I love the systems they have for scaling the difficulty - various spirits are harder or easier to win with, especially playing solo. So I started with the easiest and worked my way up. I haven't even tried the scenarios or special invaders. The different spirits with their special abilities give the game variety and good replayability. I like that the multi-player games can still be played very independently. You don't HAVE to have a team strategy to win - if each player does well on their own board, the team wins. But if a player has bad luck and needs help, the others often can help, so multi-player games make it easier to offset bad luck. Great system for scaling up the size of the island based on the number of players. This is NOT a game for beginners or those who love simple board games. I like complex games and I'm good at remembering rules, but I still sometimes make mistakes in this one if I'm not careful. It is rather complex. If you don't want complex, don't buy this game. Otherwise it's perfect, especially for people who enjoy a solo game sometimes and other times want to play with others.
Review: A Solo and Co-op Masterpiece Par Excellence - From Settlers of Catan to Puerto Rico, there are tons of prominent board games that feature an island being civilized by invading forces. Greater Than Games wanted to ask the question, “What if the island fought back?” To answer that question, let’s get to the review! OVERVIEW: You play Spirit Island on a board made up of one map per player. Each map is seeded with enemy settlements and allied Dahan natives. Players take their turns simultaneously, beginning by choosing one of their spirit’s growth options which will place presence on the board to allow them to use powers. Doing this lets players often increase either their energy income or the number of cards they can play per turn. They will then select the power cards that they will play for the turn, paying their cost (if any). Some cards are fast and will activate immediately. The invaders then take their turn ravaging some land types, defeating any Dahan there, and blighting the land. They will then build new settlements and other land types, and then send out explorers to repeat the process. The players then resolve any slow powers they played for the turn and discard all cards used for the turn. If the players can defeat enough of the invaders before too much of the land is blighted, they win. PRO, 5 out of 5: FOCUSED SIMULTANEOUS PLAY. Because each player begins on their own separate board with limited range on their powers, they can generally focus on the problems facing them on their map. This reduces analysis-paralysis and speeds up the game. But as the game progresses, players will be able to extend their presence to their neighbor’s maps, which slowly ratchets up the cooperation and creates more of a tactical puzzle as the game goes on. PRO, 5 out of 5: FEAR EFFECTS. Players have a pool of fear tokens. As settlements are defeated and card effects are resolved, the tokens are moved down to the “generated fear” section. When all of the fear has been earned, the tokens are moved up and one fear card is moved down, waiting to be activated later in the turn. When 3 fear cards have been earned, the terror level for the game increases. Increasing the terror level makes both the victory conditions for the game easier and also levels up the powers of the fear cards you earned. The fear cards themselves are a lot of fun. Since you never know what effect they have, they give you random boosts to your strategy. PRO, 5 out of 5: TACTICAL PUZZLE. The tactical richness of Spirit Island really is unparalleled. The invader actions are telegraphed multiple turns in advance, giving you time to defeat them. The tactical puzzle gets even more interesting with the use of fast and slow powers. Trying to coordinate how to best use your powers to address the telegraphed invader actions makes this one of the best tactical puzzles in co-op board gaming history. PRO, 5 out of 5: VALUE AND VARIETY. Spirit Island comes with 4 scenarios that drastically change the rules of the game. It also comes with 3 different European adversaries for you to face. Each adversary has unique abilities and step-by-step upgrades to provide the exact challenge you want. As if that wasn’t enough, you can even flip the game boards over to get a more challenging but more geographically realistic alternate board setup. All of this gives Spirit Island immense replay value and allows players to adjust the difficulty to the exact level they need. PRO, 5 out of 5: SPIRIT DIFFERENTIATION. Each spirit has unique setup rules, abilities, growth and power options, innate powers if they get combos from certain cards, and an entirely unique set of 4 power cards that only they can use. It’s a staggering amount of differentiation, and the game really feels almost completely different each time. And I haven’t even mentioned the ridiculous variety of minor and major powers that you can upgrade your spirit with throughout the game. This can culminate into ridiculous superpowers like lightning bearing down on the land or floods to wash enemy cities away. The variety in how your spirit will play game to game is truly spectacular. OVERALL SCORE, a resounding 5 out of 5. Spirit Island is absolutely one of my top co-op games of all time. I just love this game. Both serious and casual players that I’ve introduced the game to have loved it as well. The combination of incredible variety, fast gameplay, and deep tactical puzzles is amazing. To keep my thoughts brief, Spirit Island is a co-op that every gamer should have in their collection. As a side note, the expansion “Branch & Claw” adds a ton of content to the game. I honestly don’t play the game anymore without it. It should also come as no surprise that Spirit Island is excellent when played solo. When I play with just one spirit, I can complete a game in about 30 minutes, which is an amazing amount of gameplay for such a short time invested. Adding in a second spirit makes the puzzle that much tougher and exciting. All of my previous recommendations hold for people who want to play Spirit Island solo. It is GREAT. Happy gaming! This is Dr. D, and I’m out!

## Features

- COOPERATIVE STRATEGY BOARD GAME FOR 1-4 PLAYERS – Work together as Spirits of the island to repel colonizing invaders before they blight your home. One of the most acclaimed cooperative board games for adults, Spirit Island offers deep strategic gameplay that rewards planning and teamwork.
- SOLO OR MULTIPLAYER – Play fully solo with dedicated single-player rules, or team up with up to 3 friends in co-op mode. A top-rated solo board game for adults and a standout choice for game night with 2 to 4 players.
- 8 UNIQUE SPIRITS, 4 DIFFICULTY LEVELS – Choose from 8 highly thematic Spirits, each with distinct powers and playstyles. From beginner-friendly to fiendishly complex, Spirit Island scales to any experience level. Add optional Adversaries to dial up the challenge even further.
- THRILLING REPLAYABILITY – No two games play the same. With different Spirit combinations, Adversary settings, and island layouts, Spirit Island delivers a new strategic challenge every session — making it one of the best strategy board games for adults.
- AWARD-WINNING & EXPANDABLE – Rated one of the best cooperative board games ever made. Expand your experience with Spirit Island: Branch & Claw, Jagged Earth, Horizons, and more. Ages 14+, 90–120 minute play time.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| ASIN | B01MUHP51S |
| Age Range Description | 156 months to 9600 months |
| Best Sellers Rank | #12,278 in Toys & Games ( See Top 100 in Toys & Games ) #299 in Board Games (Toys & Games) |
| Brand Name | Greater Than Games |
| CPSIA Cautionary Statement | Choking Hazard - Small Parts, No Warning Applicable |
| Color | Blue |
| Customer Package Type | FFP |
| Customer Reviews | 4.8 out of 5 stars 2,832 Reviews |
| Edition | Standard Edition |
| Educational Objective | To improve strategic thinking, teamwork, and problem-solving skills |
| Estimated Playing Time | 90 minutes |
| Game Mechanics | Area Control, Cooperative, Resource Management |
| Genre | Strategy |
| Global Trade Identification Number | 00798304339291 |
| Included Components | Game |
| Indoor Outdoor Usage | Indoor |
| Item Dimensions | 11.6 x 2.95 x 11.6 inches |
| Item Dimensions L x W | 12"L x 12"W |
| Item Highlight | Expert-Level Solo or Multiplayer Thematic Game for Adults, Defend Your Land from Colonizing Invaders, High Replayability |
| Item Type Name | Board Game |
| Item Weight | 1 kg |
| Language | English |
| Manufacturer | Greater Than Games |
| Manufacturer Part Number | SISL:CORE |
| Manufacturer Warranty Description | No Warranty |
| Manufacturer recommended age | 14 years and up |
| Material Type | Cardboard |
| Minimum Age Recomendation | 168 |
| Model Number | SISL:CORE |
| Number of Items | 1 |
| Number of Packs | 1 |
| Number of Players | 2-4 |
| Operation Mode | manual |
| Rulebook Availability | Printed Included |
| Set Name | Base Game |
| Size | 36.17 cubic inches |
| Sub Brand | Spirit |
| Subject Character | Spirit Island |
| Supported Battery Types | Not required |
| Theme | Strategy |
| UPC | 798304339291 |
| Unit Count | 1 Count |

## Images

![Spirit Island - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71xJS-ODQKL.jpg)

## Available Options

This product comes in different **Style** options.

## Questions & Answers

**Q: Is this the first or second printing of the game?**
A: To update the answer here, as of (at least) July 18, 2018, this is the forth printing, per the printing just above the barcode on the box.

**Q: The other day the shipping to australia was $19, in line with listed weight, but today it's $43. What changed?**
A: Cannot tell from here, but sounds like your shipping address changed or the shipping method you selected changed..  No US retailer can ship a game that heavy to Australia for $19.  In fact, even at $43, the retailer would be taking a significant loss.  To us, those look like U.S. domestic shipping charges -- $19 for standard shipping and $43 for express or 2 day shipping.  Buy, again, I am just guessing since I cannot see your screen.

Respectfully,

Robert S. Solow, Ph.D.
CLS Games
Atlanta's Board Game Warehouse
LAND: 770.966.8340
CELL: 770.310.2498
Twitter: @CLS_Games
Facebook:  facebook.com/CLSGames

**Q: The foldable boards in the kickstarter version don't lay flat properly. Is this problem corrected in the second edition?**
A: I have the 3rd printing, and it still doesn't lay flat straight out of the box. It will lay flat properly if you put something on top of it for a while (such as the stack of spirit boards). After you fold it up and put it back in the box, and take it out again, it once more won't lay flat until you flatten it for a while.

**Q: Is this the original board game? I am confused since item weight is 2 pounds and the original weights over 6 pounds**
A: It is the full core game.  I am not sure why the listed weight differs, but the product is complete.

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Perfect for skilled gamers, whether solo or up to four players.
*by K***N on October 16, 2020*

It has a bit of a learning curve because of the complexity, but the complexity is what I enjoy most about it so I'm fine with the learning curve. It's well-balanced, with some luck involved because of card draws but not often unwinnable. The games where you have bad luck, you just have to have better strategy (sometimes just try to stay alive until the luck balances out). I love the systems they have for scaling the difficulty - various spirits are harder or easier to win with, especially playing solo. So I started with the easiest and worked my way up. I haven't even tried the scenarios or special invaders. The different spirits with their special abilities give the game variety and good replayability. I like that the multi-player games can still be played very independently. You don't HAVE to have a team strategy to win - if each player does well on their own board, the team wins. But if a player has bad luck and needs help, the others often can help, so multi-player games make it easier to offset bad luck. Great system for scaling up the size of the island based on the number of players. This is NOT a game for beginners or those who love simple board games. I like complex games and I'm good at remembering rules, but I still sometimes make mistakes in this one if I'm not careful. It is rather complex. If you don't want complex, don't buy this game. Otherwise it's perfect, especially for people who enjoy a solo game sometimes and other times want to play with others.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Solo and Co-op Masterpiece Par Excellence
*by D***D on July 15, 2022*

From Settlers of Catan to Puerto Rico, there are tons of prominent board games that feature an island being civilized by invading forces. Greater Than Games wanted to ask the question, “What if the island fought back?” To answer that question, let’s get to the review! OVERVIEW: You play Spirit Island on a board made up of one map per player. Each map is seeded with enemy settlements and allied Dahan natives. Players take their turns simultaneously, beginning by choosing one of their spirit’s growth options which will place presence on the board to allow them to use powers. Doing this lets players often increase either their energy income or the number of cards they can play per turn. They will then select the power cards that they will play for the turn, paying their cost (if any). Some cards are fast and will activate immediately. The invaders then take their turn ravaging some land types, defeating any Dahan there, and blighting the land. They will then build new settlements and other land types, and then send out explorers to repeat the process. The players then resolve any slow powers they played for the turn and discard all cards used for the turn. If the players can defeat enough of the invaders before too much of the land is blighted, they win. PRO, 5 out of 5: FOCUSED SIMULTANEOUS PLAY. Because each player begins on their own separate board with limited range on their powers, they can generally focus on the problems facing them on their map. This reduces analysis-paralysis and speeds up the game. But as the game progresses, players will be able to extend their presence to their neighbor’s maps, which slowly ratchets up the cooperation and creates more of a tactical puzzle as the game goes on. PRO, 5 out of 5: FEAR EFFECTS. Players have a pool of fear tokens. As settlements are defeated and card effects are resolved, the tokens are moved down to the “generated fear” section. When all of the fear has been earned, the tokens are moved up and one fear card is moved down, waiting to be activated later in the turn. When 3 fear cards have been earned, the terror level for the game increases. Increasing the terror level makes both the victory conditions for the game easier and also levels up the powers of the fear cards you earned. The fear cards themselves are a lot of fun. Since you never know what effect they have, they give you random boosts to your strategy. PRO, 5 out of 5: TACTICAL PUZZLE. The tactical richness of Spirit Island really is unparalleled. The invader actions are telegraphed multiple turns in advance, giving you time to defeat them. The tactical puzzle gets even more interesting with the use of fast and slow powers. Trying to coordinate how to best use your powers to address the telegraphed invader actions makes this one of the best tactical puzzles in co-op board gaming history. PRO, 5 out of 5: VALUE AND VARIETY. Spirit Island comes with 4 scenarios that drastically change the rules of the game. It also comes with 3 different European adversaries for you to face. Each adversary has unique abilities and step-by-step upgrades to provide the exact challenge you want. As if that wasn’t enough, you can even flip the game boards over to get a more challenging but more geographically realistic alternate board setup. All of this gives Spirit Island immense replay value and allows players to adjust the difficulty to the exact level they need. PRO, 5 out of 5: SPIRIT DIFFERENTIATION. Each spirit has unique setup rules, abilities, growth and power options, innate powers if they get combos from certain cards, and an entirely unique set of 4 power cards that only they can use. It’s a staggering amount of differentiation, and the game really feels almost completely different each time. And I haven’t even mentioned the ridiculous variety of minor and major powers that you can upgrade your spirit with throughout the game. This can culminate into ridiculous superpowers like lightning bearing down on the land or floods to wash enemy cities away. The variety in how your spirit will play game to game is truly spectacular. OVERALL SCORE, a resounding 5 out of 5. Spirit Island is absolutely one of my top co-op games of all time. I just love this game. Both serious and casual players that I’ve introduced the game to have loved it as well. The combination of incredible variety, fast gameplay, and deep tactical puzzles is amazing. To keep my thoughts brief, Spirit Island is a co-op that every gamer should have in their collection. As a side note, the expansion “Branch & Claw” adds a ton of content to the game. I honestly don’t play the game anymore without it. It should also come as no surprise that Spirit Island is excellent when played solo. When I play with just one spirit, I can complete a game in about 30 minutes, which is an amazing amount of gameplay for such a short time invested. Adding in a second spirit makes the puzzle that much tougher and exciting. All of my previous recommendations hold for people who want to play Spirit Island solo. It is GREAT. Happy gaming! This is Dr. D, and I’m out!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Complex game but it rewards the learning curve to build to a big flashy climax
*by M***E on August 10, 2020*

short summary: very complex game that takes a long time to set up, and understand the rules. set aside a lot of time for your first playthrough. but it goes quicker once you get a handle on it, and builds to a big splashy climax that everyone can contribute to both individually and collaboratively. Longer review: Just got this game and played once through with a 12/15 yo, and both are familiar with complex tabletops. We played it (and pretty easily beat it) with both of the two nerfing rules in play, as we were learning the game; next time I'll play with just one of the nerfs. It still took about 4 hours to play, after setup, and that only got us through about 1/2 of each of the game timer decks before we won outright. (I wouldn't expect a game that consumed those decks to necessarily take 8 hours--it's just the learning curve). The below notes are feedback from just the first play through. I really think it'll get much much easier with experience. Cons: -it took about 90 minutes to follow the setup instructions. I'd expect subsequent games to be closer to 30 mins now that we understand the nomenclature of the pieces. There's still somethings that will take time, like deck building. -it needs a good size table. There are lots of cards for the players to manage individually that cycle in and out of play. -the rules are daunting. I spent 2 hours reading them and grokking them, and then another 30-45 mins teaching the kids, and it took about two turns before we really all got it what each thing was and was going to do. -lots of pieces and cards to manage Pro: once you get through the rules learning curve, it actually becomes quite straightforward and intuitive and goes quickly. I fully expect future games to play much quicker, even if we add rules complexity/difficulty. most games like this I'll re-read the rules after the first play to see what mistakes of understanding were made; this was the first time that I've done a reread and really found no mistakes in our play of fundamental understanding. that is to say, once you get it, it's pretty intuitive. I like the card management for powers. it allows individuals to easily understand their own abilities and how they can play a role. complex games like this are often a struggle between remembering the rules and then how to best use those rules for your strategy to win. We obviously struggled with that in the beginning ("I don't understand, what is the best choice?") but once we could see the path to victory the options for each player actually became pretty clear. Individuals can both contribute independently but also need to work together to stack power effects. The best part of the game, and really it's most interesting feature, is that it's back loaded. Most resource management games you start out with a lot of stuff and burn it down; the question becomes do you win or lose before you run out of resources. That's hard because you don't know the pace of consumption, so you're either too cautious or too frivolous with resources in the beginning. For instance, Dead of Winter plays like that. Spirit Island on the other hand is the first game that I've played that is the reverse of that. Individual character's powers build throughout the game, leading to increasingly flashy effects. It builds to a nice climax. The win conditions actually become easier, not more difficult, over time, and the game increasingly works against itself over time through a progression of disadvantaging the AI (game opponents) the more rounds that are played. It could be a trap, actually, to count on late-stage win conditions that whoops fail to materialize in time. It has the benefit that, as we're learning the rules and making mistakes of strategy in the early rounds, those mistakes are surmountable by later play with bigger effects once you know the pace and what's coming at you. The only thing that I think we might have regularly forgotten is that while villages and cities each have 2 and 3 HP respectively, and do 2 and 3 damage respectively, destroying them only add 1 and 2 fear respectively. I wish there were more fear tokens to consume in order to allow for villages and city destruction to consume 2 and 3 fear tokens respectively, in alignment with their HP and damage, it'd be easier to remember. How often we made that mistake really would inform how easy it was to meet the win conditions. But that's really just a mistake, not a core misunderstanding. I've definitely played games with more pieces and cards to manage. This one is probably medium, and most of them are on the play board not in a player's personal management responsibility. Bottomline is that the three of us are all looking forward to playing it again, with different and harder starting conditions; now that we know the rules and the pace of play it'll go much faster and be much easier to design strategy against it. But if you're not a gamer that enjoys setting aside a whole afternoon to get started with a game, this may not be the game for you to approach. It's therefore more of a family game for players that will return to it, than a social game that you want to teach to visitors for just one playthrough.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Greater Than Games | Spirit Island: Base Game | Cooperative Strategy Board Game | 1 to 4 Players | 90+ Minutes | Ages 14+
- Greater Than Games | Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate | Cooperative Strategy Board Game Expansion | 1 to 6 Players | 90+ Minutes | Ages 14+
- Greater Than Games | Spirit Island: Feather & Flame | Cooperative Strategy Board Game Expansion | 1 to 4 Players | 90+ Minutes | Ages 14+

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*Product available on Desertcart South Africa*
*Store origin: ZA*
*Last updated: 2026-09-06*