Puerto Rico is a Euro-style board game designed by German designer Andreas Seyfarth and published in 2002 in a German-language edition by Alea. Players assume the roles of colonial governors on the island of Puerto Rico during the age of Caribbean ascendancy. Puerto Rico was the highest-rated game on the board game website BoardGameGeek for over five years, until it was surpassed by Agricola. The aim of the game is to amass victory points in two ways: by exporting goods and by constructing buildings.

  1. In a forum on BoardGameGeek, some players have suggested that players starting with a corn plantation should start with 1 doubloon fewer than players who start with an indigo plantation.

Ending

The game can end in three different ways:

Strategy

There are two primary strategies used in Puerto Rico, corresponding to the two means of earning victory points (VP). One strategy, often called the 'shipping strategy', is to attempt a high level of goods production, and to ship those goods back to the homeland for points. Corn is produced free and indigo has a low investment cost, therefore these goods are commonly chosen when this strategy is used because all exports are valued the same. The major disadvantage of this strategy is that doubloons are harder to acquire, and thus buildings are harder to build.

The other major strategy is to produce crops that are worth more (i.e. tobacco and coffee), and to use the cash produced from selling/trading to buy more buildings that also give new abilities. Expensive buildings can give a player many victory points, but fewer goods are likely to be shipped to the homeland, and so the VPs from exports can be expected to be low. In filling all their building spaces, a player can cause the game to end relatively quickly, before players using the 'shipping strategy' can capitalise on their investment in buildings and crops that increase shipment VPs.

There are also many minor strategies that play on the nuances of how the buildings interact.

Expansions and online versions

In January 2004, Alea released an official expansion to Puerto Rico. The addition consists of 14 new buildings that may be used alongside of, or instead of, the original 17.

In February 2004, Seyfarth released a separate card game called San Juan for two, three or four players. It is based on Puerto Rico and published by the same companies, following the same art style and making use of some of the same buildings and resources.

A second expansion was under development, but it was later announced that it was cancelled. Instead, a different, but inclusive, expansion is included in the Alea 10th anniversary 'treasure chest' released in 2009, which contains expansions for a number of different games by the company. The Puerto Rico expansions included consist of the original expansion, as well as a small expansion of several new buildings and red 'nobleman' colonists, which interact with the new buildings. An English language translation of the new expansion was released at the end of 2009 by Rio Grande Games.

A playable online version is available, and, as of April 2026, nearly 3 million games had been played this way. An iPad version was launched in August 2011.

Criticism

While Puerto Rico was highly reviewed upon its initial release in 2002, it has come under renewed attention since then for its core premise of colonialism.

In 2017, Sam Desatoff at Vice magazine wrote "It feels disrespectful for Seyfarth to disregard slavery so completely. By using slavery as a gameplay mechanic without acknowledging the human cost of it (or even using its name directly), by rendering the institution to a mere tool, the true costs of running your economic engine are ignored. It almost seems to uncritically adopt the slavers' mindset, without any self-awareness. The effect is to make players gathered around a table for a game of Puerto Rico into unwitting moral accomplices in the horrors of human servitude."

Academics Cornel Borit, Melania Borit, and Petter Olsen discussed Puerto Rico in a study of colonialism in popular board games in 2018. "In Puerto Rico, the indigenous population is completely absent. The world is populated only by colonists who arrive from the metropolitan centres by ship and settle into the new world with the support of the administrator (i.e. the Mayor), fitting into the freshly colonised society in accordance with labour force needs. Thus, the subaltern, who, from a historical point of view, had inhabited the Greater Antilles prior to colonisation, is excluded from the re-enactment of this colonial reality. To use Spivak’s critical parlance, it has no voice within the simulated historical world of the game."

Philosophy professor Stephanie Partridge wrote of Puerto Rico in 2019: "Still, even those of us who are fairly good at seeing the connection between some games and our collective, colonialist past and present tend to find ourselves bracketing such concerns for the sake of gameplay. (Honestly, we probably pull in and out of the gameplay as the incorrigible social meanings impress themselves on us more or less, depending on what game activity we are carrying out). How many of us have carried on playing Puerto Rico or (Settlers of) Catan as if there are no indigenous peoples present in our fictionalized colonial world to “mess it up” — a terra nullius fantasy — or bracketing the (abstracted) exploitation or even enslavement of indigenous peoples. Our tendency to bracket, of course, doesn't mean that there aren't legitimate objections to such colonialist-themed games. It suggests that we have subjectively made an internal calculation about how egregious we think that the representational offense is and whether it is “worth it” to criticize the collective ludic activity of our friends."

Awards and rankings

  • Deutscher Spiele Preis, Winner. 2002
  • Essen Feather, Winner. 2002
  • Spiel des Jahres, Nominee. 2002
  • International Gamers Award (General strategy, Multiplayer Category), Winner. 2003
  • BoardGameGeek, Number #1 Rated Game. 2003 - August 17, 2008 and March 1, 2010 – December 2010
  • BoardGameGeek, Number #2 Rated Game. August 18, 2008 - February 28, 2010 and December 2010 – unknown. Currently, #24 rated game.

Reviews

  • Scrye

See also

  • San Juan, card game based on Puerto Rico
  • Other games by Seyfarth
  • Manhattan
  • Thurn and Taxis

References

Further reading

  • Alea's home page for the game
  • iPad - The official version of Puerto Rico for iPad
  • Tropic Euro - free online multiplayer adaptation of Puerto Rico for 2-5 players
  • An unofficial online multiplayer version of Puerto Rico
  • Puerto Rico at Rio Grande Games, American Publisher, with PDF download of English language rules
  • Video review and rules explanation by Board Games with Scott
  • BGA - Puerto Rico can be played online multiplayer at Board Game Arena.