Two Rex Plays #3 - Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘N Write
In this blog we’re discussing Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘N Write designed by Brian Lewis, David McGregor, Marissa Misura and published by Pandasaurus Games. In this roll & write you construct a dinosaur theme park, genetically engineer the main attractions, and hire a team of specialists to help keep things running smoothly.
Here are the mechanisms and design choices that we enjoyed:
Thematically strong - As we design our game we’re finding that there’s a tension between incorporating fun mechanics and maintaining the theme, and usually you keep the fun and fudge the theme. In this case the fun is definitely there but there are very few compromises on the theme - all the mechanics naturally fit in with how I imagine you’d run a dinosaur theme park!
Non-abstract polyomino placement - The polyominos represent theme park buildings, the grid is the theme park itself and paths are needed to connect everything together. As well as being thematically consistent, it’s a more interesting use of polyominoes than the go-to option of Tetris-style stacking. One phase of each turn is to ‘run’ your theme park which requires a connected path from the gates to an exit passing through as many attractions as possible. This mechanism means you still benefit from the interesting spatial mini-puzzle which are present in more traditional polyomino placement games.
These grid mechanics allow more interesting and diverse polyomino shapes to be used, and creates spare space on your grid. In turn, this encourages what I consider to be one of the biggest attractions of a roll and write, being able to whip out your coloured pencils and turn a player sheet into a mini artwork! It also gives you something to do while the other players are thinking :)
It’s called Rawr ‘N Write - extra points for a clever pun based name!
Dice drafting - The custom dice double up as resource generators and worker placement tokens. This is an idea we’ve toyed with, and it’s difficult to do it in a clean way that doesn’t generate extra admin for the player (e.g. remembering what the dice were used for in an earlier phase) or feel like a compromised work-around to avoid using additional game tokens.
Reward ramping - As you construct attractions and facilities the excitement level of your park builds, generating additional resources during the run phase. The excitement track which marks your progress is cumulative (so you add to it throughout the game) but you loop back to the start of the track on each turn, so you reap the rewards two or three times. We thought this ramp up of rewards created really satisfying gameplay especially in the last round.
Both of us grew up in the 90’s, so perhaps we’re predisposed to like dinosaur theme parks due to a culturally significant movie franchise from that decade. But biases aside, we think it’s great, or in the words of Alan Partridge, Jurassic Park!
Interested in Dinosaur Island? Find out more here:
Pandasaurus Games
Official TTS workshop (unscripted - scripted mods also exist!)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2252623993