[Board Games] Forbidden Island

Forbidden Island is a bit of a modern classic. It's cheap, fun, and widely available. I've had it for several years, but just recently got back into playing it with my group, and have a newfound appreciation for it. The game starts out with an island that is starting to sink. The players have to work together to grab 4 treasures, get to the chopper, and get off the island before it disappears into the briny deep. It's a game of cooperation, with all players working together to accomplish the objective.

There is a fair bit of setup before you can begin to play. You start by building the island. This is done by randomly distributing the location tiles in the pattern shown: a 4x4 grid, with 2 additional tiles on each side. Put the colored side up.

Then you randomly flip over some cards from the location deck. There is a location card for each location tile. The cards you flip over are the locations that are flooded to start the game. Flip these tiles over to the blue(flooded) side.

Next, you randomly decide which character you will play. Each character has a different ability that will help you in achieving the objective.

Your turn consists of 3 main parts. First, you take actions. Actions include moving, shoring up a location (flipping over a flooded tile that you are next to), sharing treasure cards, and claiming a treasure (more on these last two in a minute). After actions, you draw 2 treasure cards. Treasure cards look like this:

They have pictures of the treasures you are trying to gather, which are themselves pictured below.

But, mixed in with the regular treasure cards, there are these special cards.

The one on the right lets you shore up a tile without using an action. It's helpful. The one in the middle lets you move to any location on the board, and you also need one of these at the end of the game to get off the island. Also, very helpful. But the left one; that's a different matter entirely. That card is called a Waters Rise card. It raises the Flood Level of the island. We haven't talked about it yet, but it's a central concept of this game.

The above Flood Level indicator is included with the game. If it gets to the top, you lose. After drawing treasure cards, phase 3 of your turn is flipping over X location cards where X is the number indicated on the Flood Level indicator card. For each location card turned over, if the corresponding tile is not flooded, it is turned to its flooded side. If it is already flooded, it is removed from the game. This location has sunk.

Play continues in this way until a player has 4 of a specific treasure card. You can share treasure cards as an action, to help you get to 4, but you must be on the same tile to do so. The player with 4 like treasure cards can then claim that treasure once they are on a tile that contains that treasure. Once all 4 treasures have been claimed, all players must then get back to Fool's Landing and someone must play a Helicopter Lift card to lift the team and treasures off the island to win the game.

There are lot of ways to lose this game. If any of the treasures are inaccessible because the tiles containing them sink, you lose. If Fool's Landing (the helipad tile) sinks, you lose. If a player gets stuck on a sinking tile and can't back to shore, you lose. And if the flood waters rise to the top of the indicator card, you lose. Toward the end, the island can get pretty small. But, if players work together and plan their moves, it is definitely possible to beat the game. Here's a shot of the ending island configuration last time I played. From 24 tiles all the way down to 6, 4 of which were flooded. We just barely made it.

One thing I like about this game is that it can be adapted so easily for different challenge levels. Included in the game itself is the ability to start with the Flood Level higher for more of a challenge. But also, trying a different island configuration layout can make the game quite a bit more difficult. The standard layout makes it pretty easy to move from location to location even when you start losing some tiles. But if the configuration were such that some paths are only 1 tile wide, suddenly protecting certain tiles becomes much more important.

I also like that the variability of the board layout and the player characters keeps the game fresh. No two games are ever the same, and strategies have to shift quickly as the island changes during the course of the game.

But I think the thing I like best about the game is that it keeps all players engaged until the very end. The players win together or lose together, and you need to pay attention on other player's turns, as mapping out a strategy together is the only way to win.