Twitter Suspension! (by board game)

EDIT: Suspension over after a few hours. Thanks for all the supportive tweets folks!
Justice won! You can still scroll down and read my quick review of the game that got me in trouble.

I’ve just been temporarily suspended from Twitter because of a…board game review!

A few days ago @ThinkingAspiring asked me about the game I was playing, “Spirit Island,” and I replied with a brief accurate description of the game. As a result, Twitter now suspects me of advocating white genocide!

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I can get back in Twitter’s good graces by deleting the tweet but that would require me to admit that it violated the Twitter Rules, which it didn’t! Of course, by refusing to delete I have had my account put into complete lockdown while they review my appeal. Oy. I will delete if I gotta, but I’m seeing if they have any sane actual humans who review these things.

I wonder why this popped up? That tweet has been up for over two days so I would have thought it has already passed any built-in auto-checks. That would leave the possibility that some nefarious weasel with a grudge decided to report me just for kicks. Hmmm… Have I annoyed anyone that much with my horrible food takes?

Anyway, if one of you wishes to inform my Twitter peeps of my crimes against humanity, feel free! Maybe someone could smuggle in a digital file or stage a prison break.

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Now, since I have you here, let me briefly tell you about the game that got me in trouble!

It’s a complicated board game, my fave, in the genre we gamer nerds call cooperative. This means, the players, from 1-4, aren’t playing against each other but instead team up to beat the game. Each player takes a great spirit of the island (those weird faces on the box cover) and uses them to destroy the arriving white colonizers. I wasn’t kidding, the game is explicitly about killing the white invaders!

There they are, little white guys all over the map, popping up like wack-a-moles each turn. To destroy them, you use your powers to crush, burn, poison, etc (each spirit has its own specialty). The spirits are represented by those colored round circles, plus their power cards, shown below.

One of the things I love is how the tension level in the game steadily increases. The island starts off fairly peaceful, with only a few nasty white pieces hanging around. The spirits themselves are sleeping, meaning you don’t have many powers. As the game progresses, the white people arrive in increasing numbers but your powers also get bigger and badder. Can you keep up? That’s the fun part. With more than one player (you can also play solo) the game involves a lot of discussion and teamwork. (“I can zap this city there if you can give me a bonus move with your lightning card…”) Nerd heaven!

Once you learn how to beat the base game, you can add various elements that make the game a lot tougher. For instance, the game provides adversaries, each with their own special abilities, that you can play at higher and higher levels of difficulty. Beating an adversary at level 6 is not for the faint-hearted!

Finally, when I say this game is complicated, I mean it’s way beyond anything you’re used to if all you’ve played is Monopoly. Here’s a small snippet of the rules:

Each turn is a delightfully complicated puzzle. You only have a limited number of actions that you can use and you have to balance stopping the invader this turn against increasing your power so you can do even more on later turns. Focus too much on the present and you’ll be overwhelmed in the future. I often play the game solo on Steam (which has a great simulation of the board game) and I take four spirits against the invaders and fight them at level six. By the end of a multi-hour session, my brain will be completely drained and I’ll have to go take a lay down. Hopefully, all this heavy brain work will help keep Alzheimer’s at bay!

By the way, when I called the game “woke,” I meant it. The designer, Eric Reuss, has made it clear he was designing the anti-settler game in contrast with other very popular settler games, like Catan and Puerto Rico. I don’t mind, it’s just a game. Even the design of the pieces is kinda progressive. The invaders and pollution circles (yes, the game is also pro-environment and the white guys do a LOT of polluting) are unnatural plastic, the spirits and the native villages are made of good wholesome wood!

Most games aren’t this woke but progressive politics have affected board gaming. There are some board gamers who get obsessed with the politics of board games and will call out games for advancing white supremacy. Some game designers are very careful not to step on progressive toes while others ignore the politics. I could list a dozen game controversies (games accused of whitewashing, misogyny, ableism, you name it) but I’m not eager to expose my hobby to any carping outsiders. Anyway, the very political types are a minority and most gamers just want to play games, and they don’t see the theme of the game as anything to worry about.

So now I must wait on Twitter’s decision. What shall I do? Maybe log on and play another game of Spirit Island? I think I can take down Sweden at level six!