You’re In Luck, Another ‘Doctor Lucky’ Game Is Here
Have you been cheated at cards? Seen a tea party ruined? Do you seek ever more challenging games in your hunting career? Do you just hate cats and don’t care who gets in your way? Take a vacation to Isla Fortuna and take out your nemesis!
The Island of Doctor Lucky is a continuation of Cheapass Games’ series of tabletop games following Kill Doctor Lucky, which it re-released in 2015 for its 19.5th anniversary. Like the first game, Island is a sort of inverted Clue/Cluedo, where players move in controlled ways around the board, attempting to strategically position themselves to murder the titular NPC, “despicable philanthropist Doctor J. Robert Lucky.”
The game features a colorful and intriguing board, unique male and female player characters each with their own motives and skills for murder, and affinities for certain weapons/areas. Island brings back Luck cards from the original (not the re-release) Doctor Lucky game, which players can use to foil murder attempts by other players. The NPC cat character in this game is a panther, Ragu, instead of the domestic feline of the earlier games, and affects sight lines and opportunities.
Certain areas give advantages to certain player characters and/or weapons, and careful attention to Doctor Lucky’s prescribed movement around the board will profit the strategic player. Tactical players will enjoy the interplay between cat, Doctor Lucky, opponents, and the moment.
A particular tweak that I enjoyed in Island was the mechanic rewarding even unsuccessful assassination attempts, which awards permanent bonuses to movement speed and/or attack scores. A player can then feint attacks they know will not succeed in order to set themselves up for a later scheme. Hazard cards are also a lot of fun, allowing players to set up traps in certain area, triggered when Doctor Lucky enters the region.
Keep on playing
The Island of Doctor Lucky has a high replay value, in my opinion, with the ever-changing opportunities for traps, alliances, competitions, and the game’s built-in mechanics. Even in our playtest session we went straight for round two. If you still want more, check out other Doctor Lucky games such as Kill Doctor Lucky, Doctor Lucky’s Mansion That Is Haunted, and The Secret Lair of Doctor Lucky.
Cheapass Games is a unique and fun-focused games publisher, concentrating on tabletop card and board games. Founder James Earnest has a background in RPG and computer gaming, and the company has won numerous awards for its games design.
Check out their website at cheapass.com for a stash of free downloadable content, complete with “old free games, old PDF editions, and old rulebooks, complete with any broken rules and typos included in the original versions.”
While The Island of Doctor Lucky is available in box game form with game tokens and cards, etc., a number of games available for download on the website are printable files, and players can scavenge dice, player tokens, etc., from games they already own.
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