Eruption
Publisher Video
A brief overview of the game, its theme and gameplay.
1:35
The inhabitants of the villages surrounding a dormant volcano were happily living in peace until — KABOOM! — the old volcano sprung back to life, unleashing rivers of molten lava in every direction and blasting volcanic rock into the sky. The villages, now faced with destruction, must do whatever they can to protect their homes from the incoming surge of lava.
Your village is about to burn up — can you take the heat?
Game Summary:
Players direct lava from the volcano at the center of the island toward the surrounding villages. If lava enters a village, it will heat up and eventually burn. Occasionally, lava will spring up from anywhere on the island and cause even more devastation!
To hold back the lava, players can build walls of various materials or play cards to rotate, replace, and remove lava tiles as well as cool down and fortify their own villages.
After the volcano has finished erupting, the player whose village is at the lowest temperature wins!
User Reviews (3)
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Eruption is a great gateway game. It has familiar elements like dice rolling, as well as bright colors and friendly art, that attract non-gamers, but it introduces concepts such as tile laying and strategic choice. It also has a lot of balancing mechanics so that no one gets left behind.
I’ve found, in introducing it, that it works really well because things happen in sort of unnofficial “phases” that other players can see and teach. Here’s usually how it goes; new players decide that I, the teacher, must be ridiculously good at the game, so they all immediately target me with lava. So initially, I fall behind. But then I reach the next danger level quickly, so all the players see the powerful benefits of being the first to access a new ability as well as place the eruption tile. It also gives me the chance to access a wider variety of cards, and then use them strategically. This allows the new players to see examples of how the cards can be used – but instead of me pulling ridiculously far ahead to do so, it’s me catching up to everyone else (and evening out some of the overwhelming lava flows.) After that the players start to realize that they need to spread out the lava, earn cards for themselves, and build walls strategically. The higher the danger level, the more you can do in a single turn – often when you get up to the 3rd danger level you can take long turns and play 10-15 cards by placing and rotating tiles to gain new cards, so the complication escalates – but it flows pretty well since turns start off simple, and players get to learn things little by little.
It’s an “attacking” game in a sense but it doesn’t lead to a lot of spite since the point is to attack everyone all the time. Ganging up on someone usually just leaves them in a powerful position with lots of abilities and cards to play.
The game only lasts about 45min-1hr. It’s strategic enough to be fun for a gamer, but light enough for newbies to participate and even win. You’ll never be able to pull too far ahead, but your choices do matter and can make that 10 degree difference for the win.
For a complete review of Eruption including a second opinion, visit iSlaytheDragon.com. Here’s a direct link to the article: A review of Eruption
I was drawn to Eruption by its premise — each player owns a village on an island with an exploding volcano. Your goal is to do your best to keep as much of the lava off your village as possible.
On your turn you place a lava tile. This is one of my favorite parts of the game. You must keep the flow going, but you must choose whether to drive the lava into your opponents’ villages or turn the lava approaching your village the other way around.
Then, you play cards and build walls.
The turns flow somewhat awkwardly. As your village heats up, you are able to draw cards, more cards, and have other rule changes. It’s a bit weird to keep track of and isn’t terribly intuitive.
Another problem is that initially you have cards, but don’t get to draw new ones until midway through the game. Cards play a somewhat awkward role because of this. I felt they could have been better integrated.
Many of the cards don’t seem terribly useful, or only useful in very specific situations, so often they are discarded to obtain materials for walls, which is the other use of cards.
As the game progresses and villages heat up, there are some huge, heavy handed catch up mechanics. Because of this, every game I’ve played of Eruption ends with all of us on the maximum heat level. It requires the tie breaker to determine the winner and that isn’t much fun.
Overall, this is a mostly good game with some strange or rough spots. I feel more could have been done with the lava tile laying mechanic and to better integrate the cards.
Eruption is a very fun family game. It is funny that they call this a family game because the objective of the game is to send lava to burn up the village of your opposing players. Essentially, you are trying to destroy their village by directing lava from the volcano to it. The village with the “coolest” temperature by the end of the game wins.
When I first found out about this game, I was instantly sold. I really appreciate the premise of it. I liked the fact that it was a directly confrontational game because you are using a lot of “take that” elements with each tile you lay and also with the different cards you play.
Eruption is a game that starts off slow but then as the game progresses, it starts heating up, literally. It gets more and more exciting as more lava tiles are laid down. You will start finding out who your enemies are as more tiles are revealed. What I really like about the game is that the temperature scoring mechanics really allows the game to be quite balanced out. What I mean by that is that even you think you are losing, you still can end up being the winner if you play your cards right. And also just because you are way ahead of everyone else with the coolest village doesn’t mean a lot when someone else starts hitting the danger zones which increase your village’s temperature significantly higher.
There are some games where if you don’t make the right move at the very beginning of the game, you will lose. This is NOT that game. This is a game where it is possible to play catch up. I also really like the theme of the game where you are trying to survive a flood of lava. I don’t know how many games there are out there with this theme but this one is one that I enjoyed on both of the 2 times I have played it. I intend to play it more with different groups and I feel that it is a great game for groups that want to experience a game that consists of many elements: Tile placement, action cards, and dice rolling.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that it says it is a family game. Even a group of adults will enjoy this game. My number 1 tip for this game is to determine right away who you want to destroy. Absolutely DO NOT be a passive player. If you want to win, you need to increase your opponent’s temperature before they do the same to you.