Early January is that wonderful time of the year where you plan to do all sorts of things consistently through the year. Late January is when you realize you were foolish to think that it would be easy, and doubly foolish if you publicly proclaimed your intentions. Which is all a really long way to write that I am falling behind on my reviews already, if we assume a once-a-week schedule. So, without further preamble, here is my review for Forbidden Island by Gamewright, which I played with my wife and eldest son a couple weeks ago.
Premise
The premise of this game is that you and your fellow players are a team of explorers who have found the long-lost Forbidden Island, which was the center of the Archean Empire, who had the ability to control the four elements – fire, wind, water, and earth (no, this isn’t Avatar) – but whose empire mysteriously collapsed. The island supposedly holds four relics that allowed the Archeans to control the elements, and your team is trying to retrieve them. Unfortunately, the island you found (how? another mystery) is sinking (why? a third mystery) and you must work together to grab the goods and take off in your helicopter.
Components
Quality: 4/5 (quite nice)
Quantity: 2/5 (not too much)
Organization: 5/5 (new metric!)
The game comes with 58 cards, 24 island tiles (similar to Pokemon Labyrinth), 6 wooden pawns of different colors, 4 plastic relic figurines, and a water level meter with a plastic marker that indicates the water level. The components are all good quality, although I find it funny that the pawns to represent each player are little, simple wooden “bowling pins” but the artifact miniatures are highly detailed. Best of all, the game tin (no cardboard box here) has a plastic organizer insert that actually holds everything, making it very easy to pull and play or to put away after.
Setup
Complexity: 2/5 (pretty quick)
Setting up Forbidden Island only takes several minutes. You shuffle and randomly place the 24 island tiles into a 4×4 grid with another 2 tiles centered on the outside of each edge (see the picture below). Then shuffle the treasure cards into one face-down pile and the flood cards into another face-down pile. You then draw the first six flood cards (which each correspond to a tile) and turn those tiles over to their “flooded” side, which is the same image in a “bluescale” color palette, and then place those flood cards in a discard pile next to the flood card pile.
At this point (or before), each player chooses an adventurer, which comes with a color coded pawn and adventurer card. Place your pawn on the tile that has a graphic of it in the lower right corner and place your card in front of you for reference. Each player then takes two treasure cards from the treasure card pile; if you draw a “Waters Rise!” card, put it back in the pile and draw another card until you have two treasures. Place the treasures face-up in front of you.
Lastly, set the water level marker to your preferred level (1 is good for a beginning crew). You’re ready to go!
Rules
Players: 2-4 (more is easier), Time: 20 minutes (quick)
The rules are fairly light for this game. The objective of the game is for the players to capture all four relics and make it to the Fool’s Landing tile with a Helicopter Lift card (found in the treasure pile) so you can all “get to ze chopper!” (that one is for you, Sean). Players take turns to the left and do three things on each turn. First, you take up to 3 actions: you can move to an adjacent tile (no diagonals!), flip your current or an adjacent tile from its “flooded” side to its normal side (still no diagonals!), give a single treasure card to a player who is on the same tile, or capture a relic (we’ll come back to this). After taking your actions, you then draw 2 treasure cards and then draw a number of flood cards matching your current water level.
To capture a relic, you need to both (1) have 4 treasure cards that match the relic and (2) be on a tile that has the matching relic in the lower left corner (there are 2 tiles for each relic). The tile can be flooded, thankfully. Once you capture the relic, you discard the 4 treasure cards.
There are some complications. You may only have five treasure cards at any time, including helpful ones like Helicopter Lift. Whenever you have more than five, you must discard until you have only five. This makes it difficult to focus on more than one relic at a time. Plus, you can only give one treasure card per action, so you can’t just dump them on another player quickly. Additionally, every time a “Waters Rise!” treasure card is drawn, the water level goes up by one, causing each subsequent player turn to flood one more tile. This can quickly lead to players being overwhelmed and spending most of their actions shoring up tiles. If a tile is “flooded” and is drawn again from the flood pile, it sinks and is removed from the game along with its corresponding flood card. Unless you are the Diver, sunken space cannot be traveled across or used.
But, there are also some boons to help you out. Each player has a special ability; for example, the Pilot may use one action per turn to fly to any tile. These special abilities allow for players to come up with creative solutions to get out of sticky situations. Additionally, some treasure cards have a one-time use that is helpful; the Helicopter Lift card allows you to fly yourself and anyone else on the same tile to another tile (or to finish the game if you are all on the Fool’s Landing tile with all four relics).
Finally, there are four ways to lose: Fool’s Landing sinks (there goes ze chopper), both relic locations sink before capturing that relic, a player is on a tile that sinks and they have no adjacent tile to swim to, or the water level reaches the skull and crossbones. To make it out, you have to strategically decide how to keep paths open between the relic locations and Fool’s Landing while you attempt to capture the relics.
What I Liked
I always enjoy a cooperative game, especially when paying with kids; there’s just a great feeling to working together towards a common goal. The inclusion of special abilities for each player is even better, as it helps differentiate everyone’s role within the group, while also providing some flexibility to the gameplay. It honestly reminds me a lot of the Horrified series by Ravensburger, where each player has a special ability/type of action which they use to avoid dangers and accumulate resources. It seems that a lot of games are using this recipe lately, many of them published by Ravensburger, and I don’t mind that at all.
I also enjoy the race against time introduced by ever more flooding. It really does create the sense that the island is sinking and you have to move fast, even despite your meager efforts at shoring the tiles up. Plus, you have that wonderful sense of dread that someone is going to raise the waters or sink a needed tile when they draw during their turn!
What Could Be Better
The treasure card management just feels really restrictive and it makes you pass up a lot of opportunities to actually cooperate. A lot of the game is spent just pursuing your own goal; the action cost to actually go to someone and give them a single card is huge. I feel like the game could be tweaked to depend on more cooperation, by allowing more cards to be transferred per action, or even a straight swap. I’m sure Gamewright will read this section and give it heavy consideration towards the design of the next edition.
Results
In then end, we were able to deftly secure all four relics and a ride out of Fool’s Landing without any real troubles. I suppose next time, we’ll have to start at a higher water level!
Recommendation
Age: 8+, Fun: 3/5
Replayability: 4/5
I find this game to be a nice palette cleanser; you don’t have to think too hard about it while you play and it doesn’t take much to set up or put away. Highly recommend it for a family game night with younger kids or as an easy game to play with your friends while you chat.