Verdict
Isle of Arrows hands you one tile at a time (a stretch of road, a tower, a field, a bit of coast) and asks where on your floating island it goes. The enemy route is whatever you drew, so the lanes are your own fault, and the pleasure is in laying a road that loops past your archers three times before it reaches the gate. It feels like a very good board game that happens to have animations.
Four guilds with different tile decks, a campaign, a gauntlet and a daily run give it a shape; the quiet, clean art and the fact that it plays perfectly on a pad make it the ideal Deck game on this list. Runs rhyme after a while, and there is no co-op, but for £10.99 it is a small, confident design that does one thing extremely well.
Buy it if
- You like board games and card drafting
- You want short runs on a Deck or pad
- Quiet, clean art relaxes you
Pass if
- You want a story or a campaign of set levels
- You want to play with others
- You want to upgrade towers in depth
Towers 16 of 20
Archer, cannon, catapult, ballista and the special tiles, each extended by adjacent bonus tiles rather than upgrade paths. The combinations are the depth, and there are a satisfying number of them; the raw tower list is short.
Lanes 19 of 20
You build the map. Every run is a different island and every path is yours, which makes this the best lane design in the genre by a strange route: it is yours. Top marks.
Waves 15 of 20
Waves are shown ahead and climb steadily; the roguelite structure means a bad draw can end a good run, which is part of the deal. Boss waves are a little samey.
Economy 17 of 20
Coins from waves, spent on drawing tiles and rerolling, with a tight hand of choices each round. Pure and fair, and nothing for sale.
Longevity 14 of 20
Campaign, Gauntlet, daily challenge and four guilds with unlocks. No co-op, no Workshop, and the deck of tiles is finite; two dozen hours before it repeats itself.
In pictures
Report written against the Steam build current on 31 October 2026; prices read the same day.