Every now and then, we go through a phase where we don’t want the kids’ minor stresses and tensions with each other to overflow and make family game night…….. let’s go with “less fun” shall we?! I’m sure you know what I’m talking about!!!
Enter Forbidden Island!!! It’s a co-operative game, meaning players work together to defeat the game, rather than competing against each other. And it’s so much fun!!! The premise of the game is that you must save your civilization’s four sacred treasures and get off the island, before everything sinks under water and is destroyed. Your “island” is made up of 24 randomly placed tiles, which flip over as they “flood,” and then are removed from the board as they flood again, making your job even harder.
HOW TO PLAY
Each player can do up to three actions on their turn, which can be moving, shoring-up a tile (otherwise known as unflooding it!), or dealing with treasure – either swapping cards with another player or collecting an artifact! After their actions they gain two treasure cards from the treasure card deck, then a certain number of tiles are flooded – the number depends on how many times a “waters rise” card has been pulled from the treasure deck in the game! The tiles to be flooded are determined by the flood deck, where each card drawn has a corresponding tile on the board – these get flipped to their blue “flooded” side, then if drawn again before being fixed, get removed from the board completely. Players need to collect a set of four matching treasure cards to be able to go to the correct tile and claim the artifact. And then once all four treasures are saved, everyone needs to get to the helicopter to chopper off the island! Easier said than done, once half the island is missing!!!
Forbidden Island is a compelling and fun game. It’s about a 30 minute play, and difficult enough that adults can play a game and be challenged, yet simple enough that kids can play too. (The age rating given is 10 and up, but Mr6 plays with us easily, and it’s one of his most requested games.) The fact that its easy enough for kids to play in no way means that you win every time – we only have about a 60% success rate, and we haven’t played it on the hardest setting yet! A fabulous game!
Forbidden Island can be found at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
A Different Way To Go 