Easter Island is an abstract strategy game with moai statues shooting lasers as the theme.

Components
16 sun tokens in two colors, 14 statues again in two colors, and a game board. The board is basically a 5 x 5 set of instructions with 20 circles for the sun tokens, one at the end of each line.

Setting/Theme
The theme is that you are a wizard controlling the statues. Your goal is to place sun tokens and then use your statues to focus them and destroy your opponents statues.

Rules
The game play is pretty simple. First, the players alternate placing statues on the board until each has placed 4. Then the turns begin. There are five actions to choose from each turn: you can bring on a new statue, move a statue (any distance as long as it is a straight line and you don’t reach another statue), rotate a statue 90 degrees, place a sun token or flip a sun token. You can’t flip a token you’ve just placed or flip a token to hit a statue you’ve just placed. The first player to reduce his opponent to one statue on the board, regardless of how many have been destroyed is the winner.
When the sun hits a statue, the statue either deflects the light or gets destroyed. If the light enters from the side, it goes out through the eyes (turning 90 degrees). If it hits from the back or front, or from both sides (due to reflections) then the statue is destroyed. If the beam leaves the board without otherwise destroying a statue, then the last statue that deflected it is destroyed.
Each of the spaces for a sun token may be used only once, so flipped sun tokens are left on the board and can be used to create safe zones.

Production
The components are of good quality, as I’ve come to expect from Twilight Creations. The statues look good and are of a soft plastic. The artwork is nice.

Recommendation
I really enjoy Easter Island. I’ve heard the comparisons to Khet, but they don’t really work. Not only is Easter Island a much older game, but it is very different strategically – the board is a completely different shape and the goal is different.

I highly recommend Easter Island to anyone who enjoys abstracts.

(Note: I received my copy free from the publisher but not for review purposes)