There is something especially satisfying about watching an empty boat slowly disappear beneath cats.

Four of us played The Isle of Cats, and all of us had played before, so there was no long stretch of figuring out what everything meant. We could simply settle in, choose our rescuers, and begin filling our boats.

I chose purple.

The idea is simple enough. Cats are waiting to be rescued from the island, and each one becomes a wonderfully awkward tile that must somehow fit onto your boat. You want cats of the same color touching so they form families, while lessons give you other things to work toward along the way.

Of course, the cats are rarely shaped exactly the way you would like them to be.

That is part of the pleasure.

A cat that seemed impossible to place suddenly fits perfectly into a strange corner. Another covers a rat you had been worrying about. A treasure fills a little gap that nothing else seemed willing to occupy. Slowly, the boat begins to look less like a puzzle and more like a crowded rescue vessel.

I focused heavily on filling my boat. I had a couple of lessons I was trying to satisfy, including covering rats, and a few others that made treasures especially useful.

Apparently I took that last part rather seriously.

By the end of the game, I had sixteen treasures on my boat.

Sixteen.

They were tucked between cats, filling spaces and helping turn what could have been an untidy collection into something I was rather pleased with.

And then there were the cats themselves.

I had seven green cats and ten blue cats on my boat, which meant some very healthy cat families had found their way aboard. There is something wonderfully satisfying about seeing a large stretch of the boat taken over by one color, then realizing just how many cats you somehow managed to rescue.

The Isle of Cats gives you several things to care about at once. You want to rescue cats. You want to build families. You want to cover rooms and rats. You want to satisfy your lessons. And occasionally you simply want a particular cat because it fits exactly into the hole that has been bothering you for the last three turns.

That last reason may be the most compelling.

I felt quite good about my boat when we finished. It was full, colorful, crowded with cats, and absolutely overflowing with treasures.

Then we scored.

My fellow rescuers had done even better.

I cannot say I was particularly disappointed.

There are games where losing makes you immediately start calculating what you should have done differently. The Isle of Cats has never quite felt that way to me. I could look down at my purple boat, sixteen treasures, seven green cats, ten blue cats, and all those oddly shaped little spaces I had managed to fill, and feel rather pleased with what I had made.

The others may have earned more points.

I had an incredible time rescuing cats.

That seems like a perfectly good outcome to me.

If you decide to purchase this game, consider using our affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4cLqVe7