Dinosaur Island: Rawr 'n Write (2021): draw and develop a park

Dinosaur Island: Rawr 'n Write compresses park building into personal sheets, markers and a set of large dice. Players still gather DNA, create animals, hire specialists and think about safety, but buildings and enclosures are drawn on a gridded map. At the end, each player has a plan of attractions, roads and a route for tour vehicles.

Brian Lewis, David McGregor and Marissa Misura designed the standalone game, published in 2021. It does not require the original Dinosaur Island. The setting and some familiar concepts remain, but the round sequence and the spatial puzzle work differently. Its compact presentation is not simply a smaller copy of the earlier game.

Three seasons and a shared dice draft

A game lasts three seasons. New buildings and specialists become available, then players roll dice and take turns choosing one for their personal supply. Colour usually provides a kind of DNA or resource, while the number affects which actions the die can perform. Once drafted, dice are placed as workers on a shared action board. Players use them to gain money, improve their DNA options, create dinosaurs, hire a specialist or construct a facility.

The choices are intentionally imperfect. A useful colour may not have the number needed for the desired action, while the action space a player wants can be occupied before their turn. The die does not dictate a single move; it creates a set of trade-offs. Watching the shared board matters, even though each park is drawn on a private sheet.

Drafting is the main form of interaction. There is no direct attack on another island, but taking a scarce die or action can disrupt an opponent's intended combination. The most frustrating setback is often not a dramatic event, but discovering that a neighbour chose the one piece on which a plan depended.

Drawing a park that works

Buildings have shapes made from grid cells. When a player gains one, it must fit on the map without overlapping spaces already occupied. Dinosaur enclosures also use space, and roads connect facilities to the park entrance. Leaving a narrow gap or drawing a route too early can make it difficult to fit the next useful shape.

Placement matters beyond a tidy-looking sheet. In the final season, a tour route passes through the park. It scores for the buildings and dinosaurs reached along that route, so players benefit from planning a connected chain. A facility can be useful immediately but poorly positioned for a later tour. The map turns spatial organisation into part of the score rather than a decorative detail.

This is the game's clearest point of difference from many roll-and-write designs, where players mostly record numbers in abstract boxes. Here, the completed page resembles a park plan. Awkward rectangles and hurried roads are a record of past choices, and the final route gives the whole layout a purpose.

Dinosaurs, threat and safety

Creating an animal requires the right DNA, an enclosure and enough security to manage the extra threat. More appealing species bring more points, but also make it more important to invest in protection. If safety does not keep pace, the park loses guests and its score suffers. The system makes security a constraint throughout the game without interrupting every turn with a separate disaster phase.

Familiar names give the species a quick identity. A game Tyrannosaurus is the high-spectacle, high-risk choice; the Triceratops provides a recognisable large herbivore. The biological differences are reduced to costs and effects. The game does not model diet, real body size or the fact that these animals lived in different geological periods.

That abstraction helps keep the game fast. Players can understand why a dangerous attraction needs investment without reading a detailed species profile. The theme is a management fantasy, not an attempt to represent actual dinosaur behaviour.

Specialists, buildings and timing

Available facilities and specialists change from game to game. Buildings give immediate or continuing bonuses; experts bend a rule, reduce a cost or make one type of action more productive. Their combinations create a modest economic engine that players must use within only three seasons.

Timing is important. A specialist acquired late may look powerful but have too few turns to repay the opportunity cost. A building must provide a useful effect and fit the map. Players can plan a route and a set of attractions, but the dice and shared spaces keep that plan from being completely fixed.

Many decisions can be considered simultaneously, which helps the game move along. Once players understand the icons, the short duration makes the design feel concentrated rather than leisurely. New players may still need help with symbols and chains of bonuses, especially when several effects interact.

How it differs from Dinosaur Island

The original Dinosaur Island uses larger boards, a laboratory, shared markets and plastic dinosaur figures. Rawr 'n Write keeps the park-building fantasy but moves infrastructure to wipeable sheets. Setup is faster, and the system is more tightly compressed around dice drafting and drawing.

It does not reproduce every mechanism from the larger game. The route through a drawn park is specific to this design. Fans of the original will recognise DNA, threat and specialists, but they face a new spatial task. Paper sheets can be used for recording, and an official companion app can replace the drawing and score calculation, but the dice and shared action board remain part of play.

Who will enjoy it

This is a good fit for players who want a substantial strategy in a smaller footprint and a shorter session than a large park-management game. The personal maps become a set of competing puzzles, while the dice and action spaces remain shared. It is less suitable for someone who dislikes drawing, icon-heavy planning or making several compromises from one roll.

The best park is not necessarily the one with the most dinosaurs. It is the one where facilities fit, actions support each other and the tour can reach valuable spaces. Players looking for other games with prehistoric themes can browse the dinosaur board games catalogue. Rawr 'n Write stands out there by making the shape and route of a park visible on every player's sheet.