If The Isle of Cats has earned a permanent slot in your collection, start clearing some shelf space. Frank West and his studio The City of Games have announced The Isle of Penguins, a standalone follow-up to the cat-rescuing, polyomino-packing hit, and it is built to play faster while keeping the spatial puzzle that made the original a regular at game nights. It heads to Kickstarter on 7 July 2026.
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See how it worksThe Isle of Cats has shifted more than 250,000 physical copies since 2019, and closer to half a million once you count spin-offs and digital versions, according to trade outlet BoardGameWire. That digital footprint is the secret weapon. West says The Isle of Penguins was shaped by analysing over a million recorded plays gathered across six years, on top of mountains of player feedback. The headline result is a game that, in his words, plays "20% to 30% faster than The Isle of Cats standard mode."
Instead of cats, you are rescuing penguins from melting ice floes and fitting them onto oddly shaped rafts. A new selection system lets everyone play at once, so there's less waiting on the slow planner at the table. Most of your scoring now happens during the game rather than in one fiddly final tally. And the penguin tiles have been pared back to simple squares and rectangles, which are far easier to rotate in your head than the jigsaw cats of the original. West is keeping the family and standard modes and adding a new expert difficulty for the puzzle gluttons.
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Start organising for freeThe campaign leaves time to get the old one back to the table first. If The Isle of Penguins lands the way its predecessor did, it will be on plenty of tables by Christmas. Fancy breaking it in with a crowd? Find a game night near you.
Sources: BoardGameWire | ICv2
