“Damn, red again. OK, shore up, shore up. This one and this one sinks.”
“OK, my turn. Ehh, bad luck. OK, shore up, shore up. And then this one is flooded.”
In Forbidden Island, you play as a group of explorers who are looking for four ancient artifacts on the titular forbidden island. The island is slowly but surely sinking, so time is not on your side! You need to find the artifacts before they are lost forever in the watery grave, get to the choppa’, and leave.
The best way to describe Forbidden Island is that it is Pandemic Lite. It was created by the same game designer after all. You move on a grid of tiles, each turn starts by you drawing two cards, which are usually something good like a card of a tile or a one-time action. Occasionally, you get a bad card, and they cause the threat level to increase. The main goal is to collect card sets that you then discard on the corresponding tiles to get the artifacts. You also have the option to “shore up” – you magically “unflood” a flooded tile with the help of your trusty shovel, thus delaying the inevitable.
Then, you draw from the bad deck. This causes random spots on the island to get flooded first, or if they are already flooded, sunk and lost forever.
Yeah, that’s basically it. Forbidden Island really is a bite-sized game, let’s see the appropriately sized review!
The Good
The game is light and fast. Game pieces are interesting, the four treasures are big chunky miniatures that are satisfying to move. The lunchbox-style game box is a really cute idea.
I also like the theme, it’s exciting to see the island shrinking tile by tile around you, and it feels like you are in a mad race against the clock.
The Bad
The game is simple but quite difficult. If you solve a treasure by collecting a set of cards, you need to put them back in the deck. So it’s harder and harder to get a new treasure. On the other hand, the bad cards, which cause the tiles to shrink, accelerate, because you have to take tiles that are sunk out of the deck.
There is not much strategy to the game, as you start your turn, the game state is immediately very clear: you can either find a treasure or not. If not, you try to shore up as many important tiles as you can. So the best action to take is usually quite straightforward.
The Co-Op
Co-op is very minimal in the game, you share cards, but there is not that much to discuss or plan ahead.
The Recommendation
I don’t know, this might be an OK choice for younger kids, but I am mostly reviewing games for myself. As far as I’m concerned, this is a bad and boring game. If you want a very lite experience, sure, go for Forbidden Island, there is nothing wrong with it, but for my taste, there is hardly any meat on this one.
Info
| Release Year | 2010 |
| Genre | Luck, Strategy |
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Number of Players | 1 to 4 |
| Length | 1 hour |
Rating
| Overall | Bad |
| Story | Mediocre |
| Co-Operation | Terrible |