Designer: Matt Leacock
Number of Players: 2-4
Approx. Minutes to Play: 30 minutes
Suggested Ages: 8 & Up
Suggested Retail Price: $14.99
Forbidden Island is a game in which cooperation and working together is the key to victory. It is very much you and your friends or family against the game as you try and get ancient artifacts off an island before it is completely submerged underwater. You move about randomly placed tiles that make up the board attempting to do this and get on the helicopter before the island sinks.
The game plays very simple. On your turn you can do up to 3 actions. Some of the things you can do are move 1 space (up & down, left or right), shore up the island (to help prevent it from flooding), give a treasure card (to another player on the same space as you), or capture a treasure (via discarding 4 cards of an artifact at a matching location). Then you draw two treasure cards (you can have only up to 5) and hope you don’t draw a nasty Waters Rise card. Then once you’ve done that, you draw flood cards to see what tiles flood an then it’s the next player’s turn.
Photo from Mike Hulsebus from the Boardgamegeek.com website
Now there are some extra things to this. Namely, if you draw a Waters Rise card, you move the water level up 1 tick and shuffle the flood pile discards and place them on TOP of the flood card deck. That means that the tiles that have started sinking first are going to keep sinking and you know you don’t have much time left. If a tile is flooded (meaning you drew the flood card and flipped the location tile to the flooded side), if you draw the flood location card again, it will sink into the ocean floor, leaving you with nothing but water. If you’re on that tile, you are going to have to swim for safety.
There are some special action cards that add a bit of spice and can really save your butt from time-to-time. Everyone also has a special ability based on what color they get assigned and that adds some good flavor. You win if you have all 4 treasures captured and everyone is at the helicopter tile and somebody in your group has a Helicopter Lift card. You lose if the water level reaches the skull and crossbones level or if it becomes impossible to complete the objectives. It’s really about that easy. So what did I think of it:
Replayability:
out of 5. If you lose, you’ll want to play it again and again until you finally win. And you can adjust the level of difficulty. You can play with a different ability than you have last time. Really, you can get a decent amount of replayability because the island changes every time. You might get bored of it after awhile, but it might take awhile. Theme:
out of 5. This game feels like you’re running around and trying to get the treasure before the island sinks. You know you’re in a race against time and the sinking island thing is kind of a fun idea. Nothing ground-breaking, but the theme really works quite well for this game.Price:
out of 5. Talk about bang for the buck! You can pick this up for $14.99 or less! With the amount of replayability, this is truly a spectacular deal! Simply put, you can’t beat it. For the price of taking two people to a movie, you can have many evenings of entertainment out of this!Mechanics/Rules:
out of 5. While there is nothing groundbreaking here, the rules are well put together and thought out and easy to understand. The mechanics aren’t anything really new, but work well given the theme. Pretty solid overall job here. Not too difficult at all to learn and get younger kids in the game.Components:
out of 5. Pretty decent tiles, the artifacts look pretty cool. I hate the tin box, but it’ll last longer than the typical boardgame boxes, so who can complain? I can because the tin boxes don’t seem to fit on my shelves quite as well. Card stock might be a tad flimsy, but not any worse than any other Gamewright game.Overall:
out of 5. As far as a game goes, I give it 4 out of 5. As a FAMILY game, I would give it 5 stars. The reason is, it’s easily accessible for adults and kids alike. The theme is pretty decent and working together as a family is going to be a LOT of fun. Since it’s a cooperative game, you don’t have to compete with each other. You can all discuss you strategy and find the best paths to victory. Sure, there’s a good amount of random element here, but that doesn’t hurt. Being unsure of what is going to happen really ads to the fun. For $14.99 or less, this NEEDS to be on your game shelf. And the fact that it came from Gamewright (who usually makes below average games) amazes me and gives me hope that they’ll continue on the path. Buy it folks, show Gamewright that we appreciate games like this, ones that actually require us to use our brains!For more information on boardgames like this one, please visit Boardgamegeek.com.
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