Can you say a game is one of your favorite games of all time if you haven’t played it in five years?
Is it even worse if you have all the expansions and have never even opened them? See the shrink wrap still on my expansions above and below!
Although some might answer differently, I am going to answer with a resounding .. YES! Robinson Crusoe can still be one of my favorite games of all time even though I have all these unopened expansions and I haven’t played it in a while! It reminds me of a favorite musical album I haven’t heard in years: when I hear it again, it just evokes all the feelings of joy and happiness … even if I haven’t heard it in a while. I still love it! When I play Robinson Crusoe after five years, I still love it!
Robinson Crusoe Collector’s Edition was on Gamefound a VERY LONG TIME AGO … and it finally delivered to me in February 2024. I backed the campaign on March 24, 2021, so it took three years for this to deliver!!! I know a lot of people who were very very upset with Ignacy (the designer and publisher) over this lateness. I guess I wasn’t as upset as others, but I also had to wait five years for Sentinels of Earth Prime to deliver, so three years feels like a breeze!
This is a deluxe version/expansion for the game. If you have the original first edition game (which I do), this is just an deluxified expansion for the game. Now, the Gamefound claims that this expansion works with the first edition of the game (which I have). And it …. mostly does. We’ll discuss that more later.
The expansion box adds some great minis, as well as some deluxified components.
However, since this was a Gamefound event, they also offered a lot more stuff to expand the game. See above! We’ll take a look at a little of this below.
Unboxing of the The Big Box
A big box arrived outside my door February 2024. What’s this?
Still not sure even after opening it … is that a playmat?
Oh ya! It’s Robinson Crusoe Collector’s Edition! Holy Cow! I forgot that I also ordered the playmat as an extra! This is literally THE BIGGEST playmat I now currently own! It takes up more than half the table and is huge … see the pencil and Coke can for perspective.
Inside are also a lot of deluxe additions and expansions to the game. Note: these components do NOT come by default with the Collector’s Edition! They are stretch goals and just generic add-ons from the original Gamefound event.
I also got upgraded components for the food, wood, and other resources.
There’s some very nice wood dice to replace the plastic dice in the game.
There’s some more cards??? What are these??? See above.
There’s some more minis to expand the already crazy minis we’ll see in second.
And a few other expansions. To be clear, the Coke and the pencil are there for perspective, they dot no come with the game!
It might be easy to get lost with all this content (I did), but there’s a nice booklet in the box that explains what everything is!
Those cards we didn’t know what they were .. they are described in detail.
In general, everything is described, in some detail! This is something this deluxe edition got right: within the book, they make sure to describe everything that comes in the box … even the Gamefound expansions! It’s too easy to let that stuff lag and say “just look at the Gamefound site” … nope! This explains everything that comes with the game!
One final thing I want to mention: I got the Book of Adventures. This is one of the nicest spiral bound notebooks I have ever seen. It essentially collects together all (?) adventures and scenarios we’ve seen for Robinson Crusoe over the year into one volume. This is gorgeous.
This is just all the extra stuff from the Gamefound event! See above. But, what actually comes in the box: Robinson Crusoe Collector’s Edition?
Unboxing of Robinson Crusoe: Collector’s Edition
The actual box is pretty large! This is the box you can buy in stores …
It’s taller than my can of Coke!
At the top is the Introductory Campaign Guide!
This guide looks amazing, but it gets only a C on the Chair Test: Why? Because it hopelessly flops over the edges of the chair next to me… see below.
Underneath that is the content guide we saw earlier …
Under that is some cardboard pieces: the volcano and some tokens.
But what everyone wants to see are the minis!!
These are the sundrop minis … that I paid way too much for. But they look cool.
Most of the minis replace the two worker placement tokens.
Underneath the minis are some space.
The players boards in the box replace the original player boards: they are 3 level boards and look fantastic!
The rest of the box is pretty empty … it holds a few mini expansions and cards.
Basically, this box is supposed to replace and hold all of your original Robinson Crusoe content.
You can see everything in (and not in) the box above! This is a really nice expansion.
The Case of the Missing Monkey
Those of you paying attention might notice the missing mini in the upper right of the mini box. Did I lose a mini when I unpacked it? Did the publisher forget a mini?
Turns out the missing mini is a Monkey … that I had to specially order. I didn’t just get it. Supposedly, they publisher will offer the mini on the website after the fulfillment is done.
See this Board Game Geek thread here about the Case of the Missing Monkey!
First Edition
To be clear, I have the original first edition of Robinson Crusoe which came out in October 2012. See above and below: it’s not exactly the best organized. But I played the heck out of this solo over the years!
The rulebook for the first edition worked for me, but a lot of people complained about it .. they also wanted to upgrade the game as well. So, the second edition of Robinson Crusoe came out: it had a much better rulebook as well as numbered the cards on certain decks and other things.
Now, I backed the Collector’s Edition because the publisher said “it does support the first edition!” And they are mostly right. The real issues come up when playing the Introductory Campaign; These issues are three-fold:
- The cards in the original First Edition are NOT numbered: a lot of the set-up instructions refer to cards numbered xxx-yyy. Luckily, they also list all the cards, so this isn’t a deal breaker.
- Some cards are missing. A few cards that the tutorial refers to are simply not in the first edition.
- Some cards are relabelled. The Cure is labelled something else … the card is there but has a different name in the First Edition.
We’ll address each of these in more detail when we discuss the tutorial, but other than that, the Collector’s Edition did work with the First Edition. To be fair, none of these issues made the game unplayable, but you do have to be flexible.
The Introductory Campaign
The most interesting thing to come in the Collector’s Edition (besides the minis) is the Introductory Campaign Scenario Book. This is basically a 4-scenario long campaign that slowly brings you into all the rules of this big complex game called Robinson Crusoe! It’s basically a very guided tutorial to get people playing.
The campaign starts very simple, showing off some of the base rules. Every new scenario in the campaign builds on the previous rules until the last game is a “full” game of Robinson Crusoe!
Over the course of March 2024, I played through one scenario a week (solo) until the end of March 2024.
Scenario 1: Warm Welcome To Tamatoa
Scenario 1: Warm Welcome to Tamatoa from the campaign doesn’t use the main map. It uses the actual campaign book: see above and below.
This particular scenario is a very very abbreviated version of the rules. I figured since I was an experienced player that I’d walk right through this: nope! it’s actually a nice little puzzle. I had to play it twice to win!
You’ll also note that I forgot to use the minis for the workers in my first game: I used the original wood disks. I know, how did I miss that???
In my second game (after losing the first), I did use the minis. Look how nice they look!
This is a real nice way to ease people into the Robinson Crusoe game. This first scenario was a fun little puzzle.
My only real complaint was the that I had to go looking for cards #1-#3 for the Event Deck .. but remember that the First Edition doesn’t have the Event deck cards numbered! Luckily, the card names were listed so I could just hunt for the right cards: Vertigo, Fight, Memories of the Cruise.
But in general, this first scenario is a great way to get people into Robinson Cruose.
Scenario 2: Which Way The Wind Blows?
My second game didn’t start off great. Why? You build the Event Deck with cards #5-#8 (Loss of Hope, Bear, Body on the Beach, and Despondency) … and there is no Despondency card in the First Edition!!! See this Board Game Geek thread for more details.
In the end, I just picked a random card from the Event Deck (Fight) and moved forward.
You’ll note, of course, that I put a sticky note in my scenario book describing the issue (so I don’t have the “rediscover this issue” in the future).
After getting through this rather aggravating issue, I was able to play the second Scenario: Which Way the Wind Blows without any further issue.
The second scenario also uses the map in the scenario book and just builds on the rules from Scenario 1. It worked well, despite sometimes having to page through both the rules for Scenario 1 and 2 (as the rules from Scenario 2 build on the rules for Scenario 1).
Scenario 3: Looking For Answers
Unfortunately, we also ran into set-up issues for Scenario 3: Looking for Answers. The Medicine Invention card is called Cure in the first edition … so it’s there, but if you don’t see that right away, you could be looking around for quite some time! Also, there are no Poisonous Spores card: I just used Poison. Again, I noted the issues on stickies so I could replay this again without issue.
Again, because the cards aren’t numbered, I had to go searching for Mystery Cards …
And Adventure cards. Luckily, everything was labelled but remember … there are no numbers on the cards in first Edition!!
It’s here at Scenario 3 when then full map comes out! That’s right, the game starts to really flesh out and start to feel like a true Robinson Crusoe game: Inventions are out, Risky Actions are out, and Mystery cards are out!
I ended up keep the instructions on the right, with the full mat on the right.
The game really starts coming alive in this Scenario as you are exploring and look for Treasure Chests!
Scenario 4: Lords Of Fog
Finally, by Scenario 4: Lord of Fog, you are playing the full game! There’s no special set-up of the cards (thank Goodness!) so no issues from the First Edition come up!
In game 4, you add hunting mechanics and the weather dice back into the game. By this point, you are fully invested in this adventure and want to see it through!
It’s a bit of table hog at this point, as I need to have the mat and rules and original box on the box (for components).
I will also say that this game really tested me: I should have lost.
My last round needed two build actions to win … “I have this in the bag…” until the Strong Winds Event came out! “What??? I can’t build because I don’t have enough actions???? I’m screwed!!”
I needed to get some characters on Brew to win, but I also needed to build some things!
In the end, I figured out a very clever way to get what I needed! It was such a trying moment to feel I had come all that way just to lose because of Strong Winds!
I think this is just a testament to how strong this game is: there’s so much choice you can usually do something interesting and useful in response to bad news.
What a blast!
Set-Up
By far, the worst thing about the Introductory Scenario was the set-up: between First Edition problems and just so many components and books, I was struggling to keep everything in reach and organized as I set everything up.
The reason this took me a month to play was that each Scenario really took it’s time to set-up and tear-down. I mean, I guess Robinson Crusoe has always had that problem to a certain extent, but it seemed more pronounced this time.
Other than that issue, I think this Introductory Campaign is a great way to get people into Robinson Crusoe! I am … or I used to be … an experienced Robinson Crusoe player, and I had fun playing the abbreviated versions of the game.
Conclusion
Do you really need the Collector’s Edition of Robinson Crusoe? Nah, not really.
There is so much content out there for Robinson Crusoe that you probably would want to get first: both Mystery Tales and Voyage of the Beagle have tons of stuff for you to do.
But if you love the ideas of amazing minis (especially as your worker pieces) and a really well-designed intro, then maybe this is for you! I feel like the introductory scenario(s) got me to fall in love with Robinson Crusoe again.
It’s hard to recommend the full Collector’s Edition (which has the base game and minis and intro) because it’s a lot of money, especially if you don’t know if you like the game! But if you know you like the game and want to jump into this world, it’s a very cool place to start!
If you are like me (with the First Edition) and like the game, there is a way to get the “minimal” Collector’s Edition which just has the new stuff. Although First Edition has its own problems, I am still happy I got this. It’s breathed new life into my Robinson Crusoe and reminded me how much I like the game … and isn’t that the purpose of an expansion?
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