Isle of Skye brings kilts, tile laying to Steam

A digital version of Isle of Skye, the tile-laying strategic board game, is now available on Steam. Released in cardboard back in 2015, Alexander Pfister and Andreas Pelikan’s Isle of Skye was quite well received, netting a load of awards nominations and taking Best Boardgame at the 2016 UK Games Expo. It also snagged one of board gaming’s most coveted awards—the prestigious German Kennerspiel des Jahres 2016, the game of the year for “connoisseur or enthusiast” games. (That is to say, a “real gamer’s game.”) The digital translation was developed by DIGIDICED and published by Asmodee Digital.

In Isle of Skye players are chieftains who compete to build a kingdom on the eponymous highland island, trying to get as many points as possible by placing resources to meet specific win conditions. It’s an interesting game because not only can what’s on your tiles and how you connect them matter for scoring, but also the overall shape of your island. Forming big rows, blocks, or columns can mean big points. Further, Isle of Skye is a tile laying game where the players set the cost of tiles, meaning the in-game economics are never quite the same each time a new player is added to the mix, or when a victory condition shifts. At the end, you get points for objectives, buildings, ships, sheep, whisky, and hairy coos.

The digital translation plays 1-5 with local and asynchronous online multiplayer. It apparently also has a feature where it will show you replays of top players doing their thing.

Isle of Skye is right here on Steam. We’ll publish some more detailed impressions in the coming days.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.