Last updated on December 12th, 2025 at 09:08 pm
Spirit Island – Strategy Game Review
Spirit Island is a Strategy/Board game from Handelabra Studio LLC, first launched in 16th December 2020.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 178+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Spirit Island Stand Out
In the most distant reaches of the world, magic still exists, embodied by spirits of the land, of the sky, and of every natural thing. As the great powers of Europe stretch their colonial empires further and further, they will inevitably lay claim to a place where spirits still hold power – and when they do, the land itself will fight back alongside the islanders who live there.
Spirit Island is a cooperative settler-destruction strategy game designed by R. Eric Reuss and set in an alternate-history world around A.D. 1700. Players become different Spirits of the land, each with their own unique elemental powers, forced to defend their island home from colonizing Invaders spreading blight and destruction. Your Spirits work with the native Dahan to increase your power and drive the invading colonists from your island in this strategic area-control game.
Spirit Island includes:
• Free access to unlimited plays of the tutorial game
• Create custom games with up to 4 available spirits and play 5 full turns
• 36 Minor Power cards that enhance the abilities of your Spirits
• 22 Major Power cards with more powerful effects to devastate the Invaders
• A modular island, made up of 4 balanced island boards, for a variety of layouts
• Thematic island boards that reflect the canonical island and provide a new challenge
• 15 Invader cards driving a distinctive Invader expansion system
• 2 Blight cards with challenging effects as the Invaders blight the Island
• 15 Fear cards with beneficial effects, earned as you terrify the Invaders
Every rule & interaction in the game has been carefully adapted and thoroughly tested by expert Spirit Island players, as well as the designer himself. If you’re wondering how a certain situation works in Spirit Island, this game is the ultimate rules lawyer!
Features:
• Original dynamic music composed by Jean-Marc Giffin brings Spirit Island to life. Each Spirit has unique musical elements that wax and wane as the game progresses.
• 3D Textured maps bring a realistic look and isometric perspective to the Island.
• 3D Classic maps present the Island the way it looks on the tabletop.
• 2D Classic maps provide a simplified top-down option for all you number crunchers out there.
When you are ready for more, choose the best option for your budget to unlock the full game, including cross-platform online multiplayer with friends and others from around the world.
Purchase the Core Game – Permanently unlocks all content from the Core Game and Promo Pack 1: Flame, including 6 additional Spirits, 4 double-sided Island Boards, 3 Adversaries, and 4 Scenarios for a wide variety of play and fine-tuned challenge.
Or, purchase Horizons of Spirit Island – Permanently unlocks all content from Horizons of Spirit Island, an introductory set of content with 5 Spirits tuned for new players, 3 Island Boards, and 1 Adversary.
Or, subscribe for Unlimited Access ($2.99 USD/month) – Unlocks all content during the term of your subscription. Includes all Core Game content, both Promo Packs (Feather & Flame), Branch & Claw, Horizons of Spirit Island, Jagged Earth, and Nature Incarnate, as well as all future content as it becomes available.
Also available:
• Branch & Claw expansion with 2 Spirits, an Adversary, 52 Power Cards, new Tokens, 15 Fear Cards, 7 Blight Cards, 4 Scenarios, and an Event Deck.
• Jagged Earth expansion with 10 Spirits, 2 double-sided Island Boards, 2 Adversaries, 57 Power Cards, new Tokens, 6 Fear Cards, 7 Blight Cards, 3 Scenarios, 30 Event Cards, 6 Aspects, and more!
• Promo Pack 2: Feather expansion with 2 Spirits, an Adversary, 5 Scenarios, 5 Aspects, and 5 Fear Cards.
• Nature Incarnate expansion with 8 Spirits, 20 Aspects, an Adversary, 12 Power Cards, 9 Fear Cards, 8 Blight Cards, 2 Scenarios, and 9 Event Cards. Partial content now available with more coming in updates for no additional cost.
Terms of Service: handelabra.com/terms
Privacy Policy: handelabra.com/privacy
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Spirit Island is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 26th November 2025
Recent improvements include:
This update has more improvements and bug fixes, including:
- When you are pushing a single piece, you can now drag and drop it instead of pressing the piece and then the land.
- A Diversity of Spirits (multihanded solo) is updated to read: "In the Fast and Slow Phases, one at a time, a Spirit is randomly chosen to use a Power, use a Special Rule, or gain a flexible Element (or pass and take no more actions), until all actions are used or all Spirits pass."
- Pour Time Sideways now interacts correctly with Scotland 6.
- Fragments of Yesteryear's elemental thresholds now work properly with Element Markers.
- Swiftness of Lightning no longer supersedes the effects of Dry Wood Explodes in Smoldering Splinters; you are now granted a choice between which to use.
- Depopulation now interacts correctly with Absolute Stasis.
- An Ominous Dawn now recognizes Unquenchable Flames as a Power Card that generates Fear.
- Quicken the Earth's Struggles can properly target from Ember-Eyed Behemoth's Empowered Incarna.
- Flocking Red-Talons will no longer get stuck in multiplayer if Sharp Fangs Behind the Leaves is in the game.
- The game can no longer get stuck in multiplayer when Smash Stomp and Flatten is used in certain situations with Russia 5+.
- Dream of the Untouched Land now gives the option to skip a board when resolving France's Escalation.
- Fixed an issue in which Fractured Days Split the Sky could get out of sync in multiplayer when gaining Time while another player is looking at their Spirit Panel.
- Lair in Untamed Lands can no longer add Beasts to the Ocean against Scotland 5+.
- Sweep Into the Sea now properly allows pushing into an isolated land that has been selected as adjacent.
- Pour Time Sideways now interacts correctly with An Ominous Dawn (Dangerous Lands).
- Open the Ways can now be triggered before the repeat of Lay Paths They Cannot Help But Walk.
- Playing solo A Diversity of Spirits, the incorrect spirit will no longer be selected as the active spirit.
- Resolving Ethereal Conjunction (Seek to Control It, Though It Exhausts You) now correctly allows damage to be applied if Flash Fires is brought from the discard.
- Secure Settled Territory can no longer deal damage in a land with a Many Minds Move As One Sacred Site that is not counting as Beasts.
- Sweden's Escalation triggering while Bargains of Coursing Paths is in play no longer shows an unnecessary choice.
Download & Availability
Spirit Island is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Spirit Island on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Another amazing update to our favorite deep strategy game. The vast choice of spirits and game play modifications makes every play through unique. Ive tested multiple spirits looking to identify their strengths and weaknesses against the invaders. There are many spirits is the fully paid version each being completely unique. The playability of these spirits is endless. We keep coming back to this game repeatedly because no two playthroughs are alike.
We are an avid fan of the game and have all of the content both in physical copies and digital. This is well done, continual support for bugs that are found and the digital copy makes for an outstanding port of the physical game. Well done.
Seems true to the game. Actually helpful to try out spirits before we bring them to our tabletop sessions.
We love this game concept and the skill involved with creating combinations is fun. We saw other reviews complaining about not seeing all your cards at once – you do have the ability to see all youve played at once or just look at one spirit at a time to see more of the map. We dont see how they would do this any differently, because its based on screen size and how much information can be shown at once. You have to memorize what combination you plan to implement anyways, so we just see it as part of the skill to keep in mind what cards you have. And if you dont remember, its not that hard to check and then minimize the window again.
Any frustration that we have about this game is more to do with the AVPs to track our hands and not to do with the game. This is so much fun to play.
Pls… We need Chinese language…. Good game.
We have seen many Reddit threads and podcasters mention an issue we also have in this app implementation the issue: not being able to see all your cards and innate powers along with the map. Scanning and cross referencing these materials seem fundamental to the game play. As the app currently functions you have to remember a card, close it, review the map, close it, review the card, close it rinse repeat. Very very awkward. Offering an interface that shows all cards, a small innate power widget and a small reference of the map would be a huge boon for play flow and proper strategizing. We want to play this game mobil-y so bad, but the interface design is too frustrating for us to stick it out.
We really love playing this version of spirit island really lets you experiment around with spirits and learn them quickly without having to do a lot of the mental math and rule remembering just pure gameplay also answers a few weird rule questions like how reclaim works. Really recommend this if you love spirit island and like spirit experimenting when you only get one chance to play the game once a month.
If youre playing solo, this is an incredible app. We had unfortunately purchased this to play with our partner. Multiplayer has LIVE games only, meaning once you close the app the game closes permanently. Baffling decision for a mobile app.
We love Spirit Island and this is a fun way to play the game more. But for the many people who have already spent hundreds of dollars on the physical game over its lifetime, $50+ to access everything weve already purchased is silly and irritating. Cant recommend for owners of the physical game unless they start offering a coupon or something that ties to physical copies.
Developers addressed this bug within a week.
Tried renewing after pausing a subscription. Subscription hadnt run out but we lost access to everything and, despite renewing, we received a validation receipt verification error and cant restore purchases. Stuck in a mid game loop we cant finish, telling us our turn limit is up. The app is fantastic but bugs like these come up now and then that make the experience a little frustrating.
Looks like a great digital version of Spirit Island, but we would like to play asynchronously as we find time to play instead of playing a whole game in one session.
We love the game and have played the board game many times in the past. Our only complaint with the app is when we tried to play with friends, we couldn't save it when someone had to our go, so we are limited to playing through the entire game in one go if we decide to play. If there could be a save feature for multiplayer that would be amazing! Aside from that the game seems to run really well and it's definitely easier to teach our friends how to play on here vs the real board.
We love both the game and digital implementation here! Id really like to be able to lead our own play mat background and it would be great if the opening main menu could be disabled but its otherwise pretty ace.
Thanks for a great board game to app transition. Add the ability to pinch zoom in to text for major/minor cards and action selection row on character cards and this game will be an absolute five stars.
As a physical board game, this is one of our favorite games. This digital version is quite good, and honestly our sole complaint is that when a game is won or lost it immediately jumps away from the board to an end screen "summary" and doesn't let you actually look over the final board state, look over what cards you had chosen for that spirit and how that and event cards/fear cards affected things, think about strategies for future games, etc (which is something we deeply enjoy doing when playing the physical version with friends).
We have played the original at least 25 times. We were eager to try this app and see its worth. Truth be told, if they didnt have that 2$ pass to access everything, we would have never consider buying it. However, we are glad that we gave it a try. We did not encounter any bug and was impressed by how efficiently every cards quirky power is handled. We had not realized how much work it would take to adapt a game like Spirit Island. They did a good job. All in all, we recommend it. We love the board game so much that we wish we could have had an adaptation by a more professional studio like DireWolf. We would have loved to have a reworked esthetic of SI like they did for Root. Especially at the 40$ price tag asked for Spirit Island we are glad to support a small studio, but we wish everything looked better. Perhaps they can work on that when they will have everything added in.
The game was put together well and plenty of different options, spirits to play with. We were looking forward to it. But am finding it too hard, too discouraging even with easy options selected. We want to enjoy the little time we have available to play.
Changing review to 5 stars now that offline support is fixed according to the recent patch notes. We havent tested yet, but exciting to see responsive devs.
The worst thing about Handleabras implementation of Spirit Island is it teaches you how you were paying the game wrong. For example, the Ocean spirit cant push an invader into the sea during an event action. Its not an easy game to learn on the phone, and reasonable on an iPad. That said, once you know the game you can play it dozens of times and still discover new tactics. Spirit island is a game that has both incredible inherent and emergent complexity. It can be hard, at first, to understand whats going on and what to do. Then, once you do, you can see incredible possibilities and interactions. Great implementation of our favorite game of the past five years.
We are playing as Shadows Flicker Like Flame. We have 1 presence in a Sand Zone. We are trying to target the zone with Quicken the Earths Struggles which has a range of 0. The zone does not light up as targetable, but all other zones we have presence in do light up (as well as zones with Dahan) Very confused – possible bug? Also cannot use our inherent ability in that same sand zone. Starting to think the game doesnt realize we actually have presence there in that zone.
We really like the app for solo play, and its a great adaptation of the original game. But we ran into a nasty issue when we were playing online with some friends. If your device goes to sleep (we accidentally clicked the power button on our iPad) then it boots you from the game with no way to rejoin. It ruined the game we had going :/.
We think the gameplay is great but we subscribed so that we could play the game on a flight without Wi-Fi and it doesnt appear that you can play the full game without Wi-Fi which is complete nonsense. We could be wrong about the Wi-Fi thing but nobody could be bothered to answer us when we submitted the question through the support site.
The app they have has been great aside from you couldnt play online the new update fixes that problem but it changes the layout of the game you can no longer clearly see the growth phase abilities on your we phone or clearly see or read the cards your about to play with no way to zoom in on either of them. It basically makes the app unplayable. Terrible update. Please fix so that we can play again.
They trick you into downloading the game and then you have to pay to play. Lame mechanics.
Love the game! Decided to download the expansion. Absolutely despise spirit and claw. We want to remove it from our account.
We cant complete tutorial because of bug. The latest version has a bug where it says to press highlighted city, but there are none. Please fix so we can learn to play the game.
Very polished and with just having recently added multiplayer to play with people online, Im impressed. Have yet to run across a game breaking bug and the options are as endless as they are fun. The lack of a 5th star is simply do to the game not translating well to iPhone as opposed to IPad. They have come a long ways in this regard but, in specific, selecting which spirit you want to control while dual playing spirits single player is very cumbersome. Often times selecting the spirit board instead of passing growth or card choices back to the other spirit seems like an exercise in futility. In fact, when the selection does go about correctly on the first click Im shocked. Other than that its a barrel of fun and replayability.
We havent purchased this game yet but Ive played the physical. So far with just the free demo version Ive been able to beat the 4 starter spirits solo. Nice implementation and nice you can turn off animations.
Runs great, looks beautiful and is an absolute blast to play. We know we could get so many many more people playing this if it had multiplayer functionality.
Makes Spirit Island and easy solo game, and a great way to practice for group games.
Not complete trash, definitely not good at all. The fact that you can only use the 4 low complexity spirits is pretty bad. Also, 20$ only unlocks the full base game and promo 1, and Branch and Claw is another $10. Like bruh, that combined is as much as the actual branch and claw. $20 in of itself should unlock all expansions and promo packs for the game, including jagged earth(nowhere in sight). The gameplay is actually clunkier than the original, and the subscription is online only. Not worth buying anything for, just buy the main game. Not worth playing if you can bust out the real game. Just a poor attempt at Spirit Island, and hopefully someone else makes another attempt.
On top of being overly expensive, ($20 doesnt even unlock all content) its egregiously aggressive in pushing purchases, going so far as to limit the number of round turns one can play before abruptly being cut off and told to buy it.
Delete after and buy the real game if youre interested. $$.
This game is at least twice as expensive as others. It takes 30 seconds for the opening menu to be completely labeled, so unless one memorizes the symbols and what they mean, one has to wait to use the game. Evidently others find this annoying because they have an FAQ about it: The Main Menu is designed as part of the story of the game; the Island has always been there, before colonizers arrived to give their names to things. You can use the buttons on the main menu immediately, so as you attune yourself to the ways of the Island, you can jump right into the one youre looking for. We also provide an accessibility option to disable all animations, including the main menu animation. Im sorry, but sitting through a lame 30 seconds animation everything you launch the app does not make your interface part of the story. It is just simply annoying.
You have to pay to play many mobile games. Its a good practice that allows developers to focus on the quality of the game, instead of plastering ads everywhere. Some games include free demos, where players can play the game a bit before playing. This is a great practice, as long as the developers tell the player beforehand that theyre playing a demo. You know what isnt great? Waiting until players have finished a lengthy tutorial, and are 10 minutes into their first game, to tell the player theyve been playing a demo the whole time, and must pay money to continue. Thats what Spirit Island does. Dont play Spirit Island.
We love spirit island and this is great game. We havent run into any bugs like we see in other reviews and it can be a bit overwhelming learning all the rules, but once you get the basics it is a very multi layered game that we think any tactic player would enjoy. We do hope multiplayer is in the works for the future though.
Fantastic app, great for learning the flow of SI for beginners, and naturally a ton of fun for experienced players. Stars lost for the obvious reasons: 1. No multiplayer. Not too bad, but does kinda knock the cooperative nature of the game. 2. No Jagged Earth DLC, which has far too much content to be missing out on. :( This could easily be a top-rated phone app.
Purchased this game via the subscription thinking we could kind of try it before we buy it. The tutorial is great, and overall the gameplay is awesome. Our only complaint (and its a big one) is that you apparently have to be connected to a network (cell or WiFi) in order to access the content that we paid for. So DO NOT get the subscription if you plan to play on a plane or anywhere without cell coverage/WiFi Couldnt even finish a game. We will likely cancel our subscription knowing this.
Nice app, a good tutorial despite some other reviews. Cant finish a game without buying this for $20. Sorry but not worth it. Poor value.
Really poor tutorial, just boring to play. But the poor tutorial coupled with game breaking bugs make gameplay unbearable, usually like Handelabra games so its surprising how poor Spirit Island is in terms of quality and gameplay.
With a complex game, it is hard to make an experience which welcomes new players, but even though the game might have been fun, we ended up deleting the app before playing because of how unengaging the tutorial was. It's something a lot of developers don't think of as a big problem, but with a game like this, it shows. There are lots of ways more effort could have been put into teaching the game. If you haven't played the game already, we wouldn't recommend it.
You can get about 8 other quality games for that.
So by game three Ive identified three bugs. The defend 3 special ability for Vital Strength of the earth doesnt work. It let damage through creating blight and losing the spirit token. Yes it was a sacred site. The 3 shield was showing and the city plus explorer should have done 4 – 1 damage for 1 total. The event wasnt relevant. All Enveloping for Rampant green had a similar problem. A town plus explorer got through the two defense to trigger blight and token loss. Also, when declining to use choke for Rampant green it proceeded to ignore the disease token which should have prevented the build. It took us 20 minutes to find 3 bugs which make the affected spirits significantly weaker and essentially unplayable. We didnt pay $20 to do your troubleshooting for you. We cant imagine how many more bugs are waiting. Just found another, an explorer plus city failed to build anything (should build a town) and no affects were active to prevent that (scenarios, events or powers).
Spirit Island is easily our favorite co-op board game, and this is a great way to play solo without the setup and teardown and adds rule enforcement (digital versions are great to learn rule intricacies). Game plays very smoothly, and the UI is well designed. Even the base game prior to expansions has lots of variety and branch & claw and jagged earth will make that even better when released. The purchase model is great as well – free is enough to get the feet wet and understand the game basics prior to buying the full game. Late game with four spirits crowds the screen when lots of powers are played and could be nice to lay out the power card by spirit one at a time similar to the growth stage to make it easier to see the map, and multi-player would be a welcome addition.
We have never played this board game but heard they were porting this into a solo digital app, so we got it as soon as we saw it pop up. Tutorial is fantastically smooth, and gives enough information at the right time so as to not overwhelm new players. We also like that they give some strategy reasoning in the tutorial as well. Sounds, UI and overall game flow is smooth and the gameplay is seriously fun. Thank you to the entire team for the work you all put into this.
We were excited to see this great cooperative board game become an app. But having played the tutorial, we now see that its 1-4 Spirits, NOT 1-4 players. Hardly a cooperative game when its solo. It really needs the ability to play online with others.
This is a great board game done extremely poorly. No multi, obviously as is Handelabra tradition, but also a very clunky and barebones presentation for a beautiful game. There is nothing here that is deserving of the outrageous pricing. Dont support these bad developers and maybe someone else can make a better (or even good) Spirit Island game.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 3.0.3
- Size: 813.66 MB
- iOS: 13.7 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Handelabra Studio LLC
Last updated: 26th November 2025 | Genre: Strategy, Board | Developer: Handelabra Studio LLC