Are you the kind of person who, no matter how much you love to slap a new game on the table, still groans at the sight of a big, thick rulebook? Do you hate it when your rules explanations for friends and family members have to go on longer than some entire games? Do you find yourself constantly reassuring people sat around your table, “Don’t worry, it’s actually fun?” Well, here’s some great news for you: Blue Lagoon’s rules fit onto a small, four-page pamphlet, and it won’t take you longer than five minutes to either learn or explain them. Yet the game itself has impressive tactical depth.
As with many of the crazily prolific Reiner Knizia’s titles, Blue Lagoon thinly drapes an appealing theme – Oceanic island settlement by seafaring Polynesian tribes – over smooth and seemingly join-less abstract mechanisms. Player interactivity is maximal and there’s virtually no downtime whatsoever, with each turn involving a single action (place a settler – either boat-side-up in sea, or person-side-up on land – or a village) with little analysis paralysis.