Designed by Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance, Islet is a light tile-laying game from 2Tomatoes where 2-4 players are building up terrain and competing for the best spots on which their bird meeple can lay her eggs - and there are also the extra components needed to facilitate solitaire play.
Tho' Islet is an entirely standalone game, it has the look and feel of a companion or follow-on from 2Tomatoes' Coral. Like Coral, it uses satisfyingly chunky wooden pieces - in this case, triangles rather than blocks, and Tatiana Boyko supplied the art for both games, using a similar colour palette.
In Islet, players are together building an island by placing out their triangular tiles: first in the 'sea' (ie: adding to the circumference of the island) and then at least one level higher on an adjacent tile. The island's growth is a collective effort but don't be fooled into thinking this is a cooperative game. It's not. You collect cards for the terrain types you place out and you spend these as a resource to move your bird meeple and you need three matching resource cards to lay one of your eggs in order to give yourself a permanent resource (ie: one you can use once per turn without handing it in). The game is won by the player who has placed out the most eggs when all the tiles have run out or, in the event of a tie, the player whose egg is at the highest point.
There's not a huge amount of strategy to the game so its appeal will mostly be to casual gamers but that's no bad thing. It means Islet is an accessible easy-to-play game. It plays quickly: nobody is likely to mither overly about their turn so you can expect most games to run to little more than 20 minutes. And Islet is well presented and produced, and that certainly adds to the game's table appeal. It should just be noted that 2Tomatoes have economised on the components by limiting those for some colours. 10 eggs apiece are only needed in a two-player game, so 2Tomatoes only supply that number of eggs in two of the colours (yellow and white). With three players you have eight eggs each, so there are eight red eggs, but there are just six blue eggs because that's the number required in the four-player game. It's only an issue if you're a player that always insists on playing with a specific colour - you won't be able to play as blue in a two- or three-player game.