Forbidden Island

Forbidden Island makes no sense. Four powerful treasures that control the elements are hidden on an island, and it’s the players’ task to go and grab them, before the island sinks. Why is the island sinking? It’s a security measure. The ancient race that once owned these treasures decided to stash them somewhere that would start sliding into the ocean the moment someone steps ashore. While it might be effective,  I feel it’s not the future of security. I could be wrong, though, so look out for home burglar alarms that are wired up to cranes and wrecking balls, ready to start demolishing  the entire house when a thief clambers in a window.

Back to the island: it’s made up a grid of rather nice chunky tiles, laid out at random. The tiles are double-sided, one normal, one ‘flooded’. Of these 24 tiles, eight are special places where you can grab a treasure, and one is Fool’s Landing – your only route to escape the island. Once the board is set up, you then set the ‘water level’ – the waters will rise throughout the game, but by setting this starting level you can play one of four difficulties, from Novice (a good chance of winning) to Legendary (masochists only).

On your turn, you take three actions, take a couple of treasure cards, then sink a bit of the island. Your actions can be moving around, ‘shoring up’ the island, grabbing treasure, and giving treasure cards. If you’re on the right space and have enough of the right set of cards, you can grab one of the rather nice treasure pieces – but the chances of you having the right cards on your own are low. Cards will have to be passed around by people on the same tile – you’re all on the same team, working together, and you either beat the game as a team or sink and drown together. But you have to work as an efficient unit, because the island is, as we know, sinking. And sinking fast.

The island does its sinking at the end of each players’ of each turn. The current player reveals a number of cards from the flood deck, determined by the difficulty level, and the tiles named on the revealed cards are flipped to show that they’re flooded. A flooded tile is in most ways the same as a normal tile – you can still move to and through them, grab treasures from them… but if a revealed flood card names an already-flooded tile, then that part of the island sinks forever, and is removed from the game. Worse still, hidden in the other deck, where your nice and useful treasure cards reside, are three “Waters Rise” cards. Draw one of these, and the water level moves up closer to the skull & crossbones marker (which means you lose, in case that wasn’t obvious), and the discarded flood cards are shuffled and placed back on top of the deck.

That’s right, on top. Those tiles you’ve only just flipped over and are flooded? Those are the ones that are likely to flood again, and sink – unless you get to them in time. This is a brilliant little twist. You know what cards are going to appear, if not the order, which means you can plan for them… but the price of that knowledge is that you know it must be Bad News. You can fight back against the flood by ‘shoring up’, flipping the tile you’re on or one next to you, back to its unflooded state. While it’s necessary to do this to keep vital routes open, you can’t save everywhere. Parts of the island will sink, and you have to make sure you’re choosing the right places to save and where you can let sink.

While Forbidden Island is being marketed as the kid-friendly, stripped back version of Matt Leacock’s Pandemic (of which more in the future) it can at times be a little unforgiving, especially if you dismiss it as an easy kids game. Even on novice level you’re not guaranteed to win – fail to protect one of the two places you can pick up a particular treasure and it’s an instant game over. But the cooperative nature of the game and simple rules make it very good entry level game for kids, and a handy replacement for Pandemic when you lack the time to play this game’s older brother. Overall, a very good race against time with rules simple enough to fit on a small reference card, unnecessarily nice components, all in a small shortbread tin-like box.