Return to Fireball Island - For the First Time!

The most recent manifestation of my boardgame Kickstarter addiction is heavy with half-remembered nostalgia -  a lovingly remastered version of Fireball Island from 1986.

Restoration Games, a company that includes my favourite games designer, Rob Daviau, is not only dusting off forgotten treasures like this, but taking the opportunity to improve them as well.

Both the original and new version of the game has players moving their pawns around a contoured map, with the ever-present threat of a marble knocking you over. This is, of course, the gimmick that drew me to the game in the first place.

Look, games with a kinetic element are just that much cooler than games without them. I have spent a lot of enjoyable hours playing D&D and tabletop wargames, but had almost as much fun in a single night playing Weapons & Warriors a quarter-century ago with Jeff. He'd brought a Castle Combat set from the toy store he was working at as part of their product familiarization program, and although two grown-ass men had no business playing we had a whale of a time using the tiny catapults to fling plastic boulders at each other's fortifications. Outside of spinners and dice, very few of the games I play now have moving parts, and ever since Mousetrap, that's been a big draw for me.

(As was Mousetrap itself, which I never played as a child, since every time I spied a box on someone else's shelf and pointed it out, it was unplayable due to missing pieces, without exception,. Honestly, why keep it then?!)

Anyhow,Restoration games made a number of significant improvements to the original, from the components to the gameplay.

• A much larger, vacu-formed, three part playing board, with full colour throughout.
• Trees with pointable 'roots' which can be used to redirect the embers and fireballs.
• Card-based movement instead of dice-based (who hasn't wanted to quit a game after three consecutive rolls of 1 or 2 on a single die?).
• Multiple paths to success instead of a single goal.
• A 'ticking clock' mechanic to keep things moving briskly.

Instead of portraying adventurers racing for a single treasure, the players are now all tourists on a remarkably dangerous island, using their turns to gather treasures scatted about (including the fabled gemstone, the Heart of Vul-Kar) as well as a limited number of snapshots at specific points on the island.

Periodically players have the opportunity to launch one of two different types of marbles: ember marbles, perched precariously at points along the paths, represents lava bursts, flame geysers and the like. Fireball marbles are the result of Cataclysm cards which causing a fireball marble (1 initially, 2, 3, and even 4 later on) to be launched from Vul-Kar, the volcanic idol at the highest point on the board. There are three different apertures from Vul-Kar, so it is almost impossible to anticipate precisely where the fireballs will go.

Knocking pawn over forces that player to surrender one of their treasures to you (or to a pool called The Maw if you do it to yourself), but then they (or you) draw a Souvenir card for their troubles. I mean, honestly, I would probably knock over the pawns of other players simply because I could, but incentivizing it with treasure is a grand idea. They also resume play from their new position, which can play hob with their plans, especially at the end of the game.

Souvenirs let players do a number of things, from navigating the island's caves, to soaring along with a jet pack, but timing their usage can be critical. Souvenirs from one of the expansion packs (the "hangry" souvenirs) are "a-ha!" cards played to provide comeuppance to the other players.

The final countdown begins after the 4th fireball marble gets added to the Cataclysm pool, or when a player returns to the helipad with all three types of snapshot. First into the "hello-copter", a 3d punchboard prop, gets the "lucky penny" token, an unstealable treasure worth almost as much as the Heart of Vul-Kar. Once the hello-copter is summoned, players have only two turns to make their way to the helipad, or else their snapshots aren't worth any points at all, which makes it an inopportune time to be pushed into a river or down a path.

The game has a limited amount of strategy, but it's more than none, and the card-based movement keeps the game from being excessively random. On the other hand, the marbles are about as chaotic an element as you can have in such an activity. They keep everyone on their toes and provide tremendous amounts of drama and vicarious entertainment, especially if you are safely ensconced in the hello-copter.

It's a great-looking game, to be sure: colourful, three-dimensional, dynamic, and fun, - maybe one of the most impressive non-miniature games I own. The printing on the island, though inconsistent from set to set, is clear and largely easy to follow, and the components look great, especially the painted pawns I ponied up for, and the deluxe marbles they threw in as a stretch goal. But all those aesthetics are for naught if the game is no fun, right? Well, no worries on that front.

We played the game twice over the weekend, and had tremendous fun each time. My Kickstarter package came with all the expansions, but I am trying to leaven them somewhat gingerly, as I a) want to understand the base game before adding too much into it, b) want to build anticipation for them, but most importantly c) I don't want to overcomplicate a game whose mechanics are so elegant and simple out of the gate.

"Disappointed!"

Having said that, I look forward to the addition of an Indiana Jones-type explorer along with smaller marble snakes, a gold idol and extra-large foam boulder in "The Last Adventurer", as well as a tiddly-wink-style tiger you launch at other players from the tabletop and a hive full of marble bees in the aptly named "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Bees". Only after we have a few games with those under our belts will be break open "The Wreck of the Crimson Cutlass", a pirate ship just offshore of Fireball Island. They are also working on an app with scoring and sound effect functions, as well as a co-op mode and a D&D adventure.

The game's 5-player limit means it is a poor fit for G&G, but I may bring it along as a sidebar game anyhow due to its novelty and its nostalgia. In the meantime, Restoration Games is working on another 80s boardgame with a novelty element: Dark Tower! But I'll let someone else Kickstart that one; I'm taking a break for a while.