Game Spotlight – Forbidden Island

Hello! I hope you got to enjoy some of Virtual U-Con this year and if you couldn’t make it, I hope you have been able to play some games – either with your pod of people or remote with friends. It’s the start of the slow season U-Conwise so while going through the Games Library (yes, I am still parts counting) I happened across Gamewright’s cooperative flagship game Forbidden Island.

Gamewright is an odd duck; the majority of their games, and I’m not an expert on them all, seem to be quick, fast, fun “pocket games”. Games that have relatively few components and fit in a double sized card tin. Games like Sushi Go or Quixx that would not be out of place next to the classics like Uno or Mille Bornes.  And then there are the Forbiddens. 

There are 3 Forbiddens: Island, Desert and Sky and they all have pretty much the same basic strategy. Namely everyone works cooperatively to accomplish something before the environment kills the players. Sky wants you to build a platform to launch a spaceship before you are blown into the atmosphere or electrocuted by the perpetual raging storms.  Desert wants you to find the pieces of your crashed ship and put them back together before the sands completely cover up all the locations or you die of thirst.  Then there is the Forbidden that started it all; Island. Island tasks you with finding 4 treasures and then getting to a designated safe spot before the entire board sinks into the sea.

In all three Forbiddens, each player plays a role that has a unique ability.  For Island, there is a role that can swim through blank spots left when an island card sinks, or a role that can shore up double the number of tiles, or a role that can move diagonally as well as in the standard cardinal directions, and so on. 

Once the island tiles are laid out in their starting grid, the players go about collecting cards, moving their pawns, shoring up sinking islands, and trying to gather all the treasures and make it back to Fool’s Landing before everything sinks. Along with those actions,  every player draws from the Flood deck each turn to see which island starts sinking next. If they happen to draw the Waters Rise! card, the game gets even more interesting as that is the card that is going to increase the number of cards drawn from the flood deck. 

Things I liked: 

• I like how the roles are specific to each environmental hardship throughout the Forbiddens and that they are designed so that there really isn’t a bad role someone is going to end up with.
• I like the tin the game is packaged in. It’s durable and pretty.
• This is not an easy game. In fact, I don’t think I have ever won a game of Forbidden Island. If you like a challenge, this game is that. A warning; this can be a bit of a shock if you have been playing Bloom and Trash Pandas and pick this up for a fun one off game.

Things I didn’t like: 

• In general I love the Forbiddens but I will confess, this one is my least favorite. I do not like the fact that when an island card sinks, it’s gone for good.
• That tin irks me with its refusal to lock itself down tight. That’s a lot of cards and components to have to pick up when the top pops off. 
• I am not a fan of “Random assignment” of roles. Even though I said that all the roles are important, I think there are a couple roles that are first among equals and it makes gameplay easier if you have one of those in play. I cheat and pick my people and I am OK with that.