Forbidden Island - Review

On an island long forgotten by time lie the treasures of an ancient civilization. Can you recover them before the island sinks forever beneath the waves? Forbidden Island is a fast paced, cooperative game for 2-4 players (although there’s nothing to stop you playing a game by yourself). Your goal is to work together to find the four treasures, then return to Fool’s Landing to escape the sinking island. Strategy and luck both play their part, you can play a brilliant game, but things can become incredibly tense when you’re waiting to draw that fourth Treasure Card to Capture your final Treasure. Fans of Pandemic will probably love this game, both are cooperative games, with similar mechanics, and both are games by Matt Leacock.

Do you dare take on the Forbidden Island?

Set up: 8/10

Setting up the game is relatively straightforward. First, create Forbidden Island, which is made in a diamond shape, then place the Treasure figurines to one side of the board. Shuffle each set of cards, revealing six from the flood deck and turning over the corresponding island tiles. Randomly deal out (or choose) which adventurer cards you want, before dealing each player two Treasure Cards, ignoring any water rises. Set your difficulty on the water tracker, and you’re away! It’s a simple game to set up, especially when you’ve played a lot, it just requires a lot of shuffling.

Mechanics: 9/10

The mechanics are simple and easy to learn, and, as each turn follows the same mechanics, you can pick them up quickly. On their turn, each player takes up to three actions, then draws two Treasure deck cards, before drawing a number of Flood cards equal to the Water level. Simple! What becomes challenging is deciding which actions to take, and the interaction between different characters; as it’s a cooperative game, you can ask other players for advice on your turn.

Let’s have a look at the actions. The actions are all simple, with a choice of four: Move, Shore Up, Give a Treasure Card, and Capture a Treasure. To move (as you may expect) you move your pawn to adjacent tile; to shore up, you flip an adjacent tile or the tile you’re on, from flooded to its original side. To Give a Treasure Card, you give a Treasure card to another play if their pawn is on the same space as yours, and to capture a Treasure, you discard four identical Treasure cards, whilst on the corresponding island tile, to claim the Treasure.

After completing actions, you must draw two cards from the Treasure deck. If you draw one or more Waters Rise! Cards, you must immediately follow the instructions on the card before returning it to the discard pile. If you find yourself with more than five cards in your hand, you must immediately discard down to five.

Finally, the scary part. To end your turn, you must draw Flood cards, equal to the current Water level, which match the tiles of the island. Tiles on their original side are flipped to their flooded side when the corresponding card is drawn, tiles on their flooded side are removed from play when the matching card is drawn.

Should you forget the order of play, or which actions you can do, each Adventurer card has a quick reference on the back.

Players must work together against the game - if one person loses, everyone loses!

Scoring: 10/10

Forbidden Island is a win or lose game, there is no scoring. However, you can change the difficulty level, with a choice of Novice, Normal, Elite, or Legendary, which will change how often you win.

Replayability: 10/10

Forbidden Island is our most played cooperative game, and one of our most played games. Every single game is different, and with six different characters to choose from, your strategy will change from game to game. Forbidden Island is enjoyed by a wide variety of people, even by some people who are less interested in playing board games, due to its cooperative nature. It has a variety of strategy and luck involved, and with different difficulty levels you can play this at a skill level best suited you.

With different characters and a random set-up, Forbidden Island offers great replayability!

Speed: 8/10

Forbidden Island takes about 30 minutes to play, although if you get incredibly unlucky (which will happen occasionally) it can take less than five. It’s a little timely to set up, but only because the cards and tiles need shuffling, but if you share this between the players it will take less time. Each turn is also really quick to play out, you’ll have the occasional turn when you have to discuss with your teammates what to do, but for the most part it’ll be obvious to everyone what to do on each players turn.

Final Thoughts:

If you’re looking for a cooperative game to play, I’d recommend Forbidden Island. It’s fun and challenging, with lots of replayability. Forbidden Island is relatively fast too, and the more you play the quicker you get, so you can play it several times in an evening should you wish to. You also learn better strategies for winning, and how to optimise your treasures, as card management is key to victory. A friend got me this for a present, and we’ve played it countless times since, it’s probably my favourite cooperative game to date.

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See you next time!

Chris