Game On! Forbidden Island

Hello All!

Welcome to my 1st gaming post! I’m thinking of regularly doing these posts on Saturday’s (because gaming is best on a weekend!) But, I couldn’t wait to get my first post out to “Test The Waters!” …..ha ha ha! Ok. You’ll see why that’s funny when I explain my first game. ..Maybe. Today I’m going to talk about a CO-OPERATIVE tabletop card/tile strategy GAME called ‘Forbidden Island’!

Genre: tabletop strategy

Players: 2-4 (although, it does come with 6 pieces and player cards…)

The point of the game is to collect all of the artifacts and get off the island before it sinks into the ocean. (I felt like Indiana Jones!!)

Setup

The setup in super easy! Just set the tiles out in a cross pattern, and set the artifacts around it.

Shuffle and dole out the character cards at random to each player. Each character card has a special trait that you will read aloud so that the other players know what you can do.

You must flip the top 6 cards from the flood cards (the blue deck) and flip those tiles over to their blue and white side. Those pieces are now flooded and you must get to them and “shore them up” because if they are pulled from the deck again than they are out of play for the rest of the game.

Each person is also dealt 2 treasure cards. You will receive 2 more of these at the end of each turn

When you acquire 4 matching treasure cards and you get to a tile with that matching treasure, the treasure is yours!

Gameplay

Each player will take their turn. They can conduct 3 actions per turn (ie. Moving, ‘shoring up’ a piece of land, or conducting their special action) then they will take 2 treasure cards and flip over some island cards in the amount of the water level.

Watch out in the treasure cards though! There is a card called “Water Rises!”

This forces you to turn up the water level (forcing you to turn over more flood cards, flooding more island tiles after every turn) and has you put all of the used flood cards back in the TOP of the pile (which means you WILL be picking them again in the next couple of turns or you’re going to lose a lot of island!!)

Work together to get all the artifacts and get off the island before you get trapped or your artifacts all sink away!!

Thoughts

I LOVE this game! I love that it’s co-operative so there are no sore losers!! Now, that’s not saying you won’t get angry at the people you are playing with! Choose your co-operative partners well! (my man sank our artifact into the ocean, thus ending the game…)

The gameplay is frantic and sometimes hilarious when that water level keeps rising. It gets VERY challenging! You really have to play to the abilities of your characters! My friend and I made it off the island with, probably about 5 tiles left in play! It was definitely a race to the finish!

I love that the game can be enjoyed over and over because the tiles will always get put down differently and your abilities all make the game entirely different each time you play.