Blue Lagoon Family Game Review (age 8+) Sent by Asmodee.

This month's review for Asmodee's Blogger Boardgame Club is the gorgeous Blue Lagoon. We were sent this family strategy game a few weeks ago, so we were able to play with one of the big kids who was home for Easter. Suitable for 2 to 4 players aged 8+, the aim of the game is to spread out and colonise as much of the board as possible and then collect the resources necessary to keep your population happy.

Inside the box are lot of different elements, including 1 board, 4x5 wooden 'villages', 32 wooden resources, 4 x 30 settlers tokens, score pad, instructions and a little drawstring cloth bag for storage of resources.

This is a gorgeous game and it feels lovely to play with. The resources are wooden shapes that are not entirely obvious at first, but that's half the fun. Left to right: Coconuts (food), Precious Stones (money), Water (H2O), Statuettes (religious icons) and Bamboo (shelter).

General set up only takes 5 minutes and you'll need an extra 5 minutes set up before first play. The Villages are depicted by awesome tiny little beach hut style houses and each has a door! I love that.

Gameplay is in 2 phases. The first phase is Exploration and everyone tries to claim the best parts of the board. Players take turns to place either a Settler Token or a Village. If you place it on a space with a resource, you take the resource.

You have to arrive by sea, as the Polynesians really did, so everyone's first settler has to be in the water. Any subsequent tokens can either be in the sea somewhere or players can place a settler or village on land directly next to an existing settler.

Once players run out of settlers and villages or all resources are collected, the Exploration Phase ends and we have the first round of scoring, depending on what islands you control and how good your links are, and which resources or statuettes you collected.

The 2nd phase is Settlement Phase and is quite similar to the first, yet completely different. The previous settlers have been removed (villages are left on the board unless they fall near a stone circle), resources placed randomly on the board again and players then repopulate by placing settlers in any space next to an existing space they control.

Settlement Phase also ends once all resources are collected or players have placed all of their Settlers Tokens. Scoring is done as before and the two scores totalled to find the winner.

Our scores are incredibly close and it is a really quite competitive, but calm, game. Each game takes around 30-45 minutes and this speeds up as the competition hots up and you get into a rhythm of placing settlers and villages.

Blue Lagoon is best suited to anyone aged around 8+ and the gameplay is really easy to pick up, so you can play straightaway. It's actually a good 'warm up' game before something long and involved. There's no big advantage with age or prior game experience, so it's great for multi-generational play too. We really like this one and it's already been played several times.

Blue Lagoon is made by Blue Orange games and distributed by Asmodee. Recommended for 2-4 players aged 8+ and available to buy now priced £29.99rrp from all good toy and game shops, including online at Amazon*. For more information about the entire range of games available see the Asmodee website, and you can find all of our Blogger Board Game Club reviews for Asmodee here.

We were sent our copy of Blue Lagoon by Asmodee for review. *Amazon links are affiliate, which means I earn a few pence as a thank you for my time if you order through my link, but you don't pay any extra.