Me and my friends recently played the pirate themed print and play card game: Haze Islands

My thoughts: Well first off, this game is very hard to understand.  The game looks interesting because of its interesting illustrations on the cards, but don't be fooled - this game is confusing and hard.
I've read the manual at least three times on the Normal and Short Game rules, and I'm still not 100% sure I've been playing the game correctly as many of the mechanics of the game don't work very well.

For instance - A lot of the chance in the game is based off of what cards you draw and the "doom dice" and what power that dice rolls (hence how powerful it is for that round). The game is a lot of luck, and the strategy is only really allowed when lucky rolls are rolled. And with a normal game only having six rounds, it makes a lot of the luck elements very important - a tad too important for my taste. The game feels like it hardy relies on skill and only really progresses with pure chance, which I guess might be a good thing as the game itself is confusing.
Some mechanics are interesting - like if you die in a game with multiple people you could become a castaway or a ghost ship with their own set of goals and rules, but they aren't executed in the best way. My favorite part of the entire game is how the map cards where designed. The map cards have little diamonds on the side indicating where another map card can lie down next to it, creating a new area along with its own numerical value. The concept is fairly interesting and the art is easy on the card itself is easy to understand and very well executed.
All in all, the game's rule book design, card design, and art are very clean and pleasing to the eye. The game itself isn't very fun and takes more time and effort to learn how to play than its worth.