How to Play Dinosaur Island

Dinosaur Island puts you in charge of a dinosaur theme park. You research DNA, build dinosaurs, hire staff, build attractions, and draw visitors from a bag. Visitors pay to get in and score points. Let your dinosaurs outrun your security, though, and some visitors get eaten.

The game plays 1 to 4 in one to two hours. This lesson follows the official Rulebook 2.0 from Pandasaurus Games. Solo play has its own lesson at Level 4.

Prefer to watch first? Watch It Played teaches the rules on video in its Dinosaur Island How To Play video. Watch it, then come back here for the rules in writing and the rest of the course.

What is in the box?

• Three shared boards: the research center, marketplace, and track board.
• 10 DNA dice, plus recipe, attraction, and lab upgrade tiles.
• Specialist, objective, and plot twist cards.
• A bag of 80 visitors: 70 patrons and 10 hooligans.
• A lab board and a park board for each player.

How do you set up?

1. Put the shared boards in the middle, the supply to the side, and all 80 visitors in the bag.
2. Draw 2 DNA dice per player, plus 1. Those are the dice pool. Return the rest to the box.
3. Shuffle the specialists, attractions, and regular lab upgrades into stacks. With 3 players, remove tiles marked “4+”. With 2, also remove “3+”. Dino Research II and DNA Refinement II go face up in their own slots.
4. Fill the four market rows, priced $2 to $5, with one attraction, one lab upgrade, and one specialist each. At setup only, sort the attractions so the most expensive sits in the $5 row.
5. Sort the recipes into herbivores, small carnivores, and large carnivores. Shuffle each stack and flip the top tile.
6. Pick the short, medium, or long objective stack and reveal players plus one cards.
7. Draw 2 plot twists and place them face up. Their rules apply all game.
8. Each player puts their lab on the left and park on the right, 4 workers in their worker pool, 4 in the supply to gain later, 1 on the turn order track, and 3 scientists above the lab.
9. Set cold storage limits at 4 for each basic DNA and 2 for each advanced DNA. Start with 1 of each basic DNA and none of the advanced.
10. Put 1 dinosaur in your park’s printed starting paddock. Your excitement starts at 1, your score at 10, and your threat and security at 1.
11. The first player takes $15. Each player after takes $1 more.

What happens in a round?

A round has five phases, always in this order.

1. Research. Roll the dice pool into the research center. In turn order, players place one scientist at a time until all three are placed. A scientist can claim a die for DNA, raise your cold storage limits, or take a dino recipe. Scientists have research levels 1, 2, and 3, which multiply what they do. Passing turns a scientist into an extra worker this round. Then the leftover die with the most threat pips goes to the holding area.

2. Market. In turn order, each player takes two actions, one at a time: hire a specialist, build an attraction, buy a lab upgrade, buy DNA, or pass and take $2.

3. Worker. Everyone plays at once. Put workers on the slots in your lab to refine basic DNA into advanced DNA, create dinosaurs, raise security, upgrade paddocks, or collect money.

4. Park. Draw visitors equal to your excitement. Take $1 for each patron. Place your visitors at attractions and exhibits, hooligans first. Then check whether dinosaurs get loose, and score 1 VP for each surviving patron in your park.

5. Cleanup. Fewest VPs goes first next round. Refresh the market and recipes, take back workers and scientists, and return visitors to the bag.

How do dinosaurs work?

To create a dinosaur, you need its recipe in your park, the DNA it lists, room in its paddock, and a worker on Dino Research. Each new dinosaur raises your excitement by the number on its recipe, so more visitors come. It also raises your threat: 1 for an herbivore, 2 for a carnivore.

Every paddock starts with room for one dinosaur. Upgrading it, up to a capacity of four, costs money equal to the new capacity.

What if threat beats security?

In the Park Phase, add the threat pips on the holding area die to your threat. If that total is higher than your security, dinosaurs get loose. One visitor is eaten for each point of difference, patrons before hooligans, and you lose 1 VP for each. The third Level 0 lesson walks through it step by step.

How does the game end?

Meet an objective at any time and claim it with a corporation token. Others can claim the same card until that phase ends. When only one objective is left unclaimed, finish the round and do final scoring:

• Each attraction scores its listed VPs.
• Each exhibit scores its VP value times the dinosaurs in its paddock. An empty exhibit costs you 10 VPs.
• Each objective you claimed scores 6 to 8 VPs, as printed.
• Every $5 left over scores 1 VP.

Most VPs wins. A tie goes to the player with more money left.