Overview & How to Play

You have your VERY OWN private island in Hellapagos! The problem is, no one wants to be there right now because you’re all shipwrecked.

Players need to work together and collect food & water to survive, but of course those are probably gonna run out eventually because every greedy human needs one food AND water a round. So then you start voting to exile the weak people on the island—they aren’t worthy of my, I mean our, hard earned resources!

This is when FIGHTS start to break out, like people pulling out guns… oh gosh.

On more peaceful topics, to actually escape the island, each player will need one raft, but remember that’s only for surviving players that are alive.

Pros

Hellapagos’s components are straight awesome. There’s a pleasing aesthetic with no wasted space on the boards/cards, with a freaking 3D card holder, cute deck boxes, and a STRAW BAG that holds wooden spheres!?

The game is also incredibly easy to play and teach. All you do is 4 super easy to learn actions. You can fish for food, collect water, or gather wood for your runaway rafts.

The last action is where you act like a prick and go like “nawww I’m doing my own thing” and peace out from the colony to swim out to the wreckage of your ship to scavenge for supplies. In game that just means draw an item card for your selfish hoarding reasons.

The diversity of these cards, that you start with, and can scavenge for, is awesome. Spare Water Bottles and Sandwiches for more supplies outta nowhere, and there’s even stuff like a magic Conch manipulate voting, Sleeping Pills, or a Cannibal BBQ Kit for uh… well you do the math.

Permanent item cards can be equipped, like Fishing rods, or Axes, which all RAISE the chances of getting resources. Instead of just giving these resources to you. So players are still victim to bad outcomes as they try to survive one more round on this island in the middle of nowhere.

And then the weather every round has a mind of its own that affects water collection, but more importantly, there’s a Hurricane Weather card that signals the final round of the game when flipped. You’re not exactly sure when this will happen, so your survivors will have to balance the in-house drama with actually constructing enough rafts and saving rations to make it off the island… that is if anyone survives.

For such a dramatic game, thank goodness you can play with a lot of friends, and 5-10 is the best player count here! And the game still runs true to time, because turns are so simple, and drama tends to involve everyone. Sure, there’s elimination, but there’s constant dramatic beats in a short game that should be entertaining to follow, even when dead.

Cons & Nitpicks

The only real con is the confusion on timing of cards. The rulebook is good when you learn how to play the game, but doesn’t explain card timings very well, beyond “oh yeah just play stuff whenever you want”.

This can be rough, because the cards are such a big part of the game, like shooting someone with a Pistol, and seeing how defending works. This layers on top of Poison interactions with voting, food, and items, where there’s confusion on how badly you really got it if you’re poisoned.

Little nitpick warning too: There is ZERO concrete reason to turn on each other during games. Think of a game with a hidden traitor or face down secret objectives like Mafia, or Bang. Hellapagos doesn’t have these cards, and to certain players, killing in on this island will just feel arbitrary and dry.

So why not just indulge yourself and start waving your handgun around to become the dictator of this island colony? Man, is Hellapagos trying to say something about human nature…? Ehhh whatever, you didn’t harvest food this round, you’re getting shot.