Image shows a steel cans - Special edition of the publishing game Wright

Cooperative games have a special charm. Players can win or lose together. In computer games, this is a common mechanism, with board games, there is now a whole series of very entertaining games to be played cooperatively. The Forbidden Island is one of them, offering something in its compact form of cooperative games a beginner stage.

The player must hold together four valuable artifacts from an island that is just about to sink into the sea. Each player takes on a character with specific skills. By cleverly combining the capabilities it can succeed in collecting the artifacts before they disappear into the great flood by the falling parts of the island.

The game is controlled via two decks of cards, the flood maps and artifact cards. In addition to this deck put the artifact symbols must be collected from which four to trigger an artifact and recover from the island, along with some special cards and "The Tide Rising" - cards. This causes all the cards are shuffled the deck so far uncovered flood and put back on the deck.

Prior to the flood maps in a specially designated circular phase always drawn according to the current level of state and the corresponding parts of the island was turned over. Below the water level on a particular display can be set to the game with increasing duration of the increases.

The Forbidden Island will consist of a total of 24 individual parts, of which those whose card is drawn, once when entering the first tide turned and removed the second time from the game. It may happen that even some of the parts of the island, where the artifacts are located (in the form of symbols). Even more dramatic is if the helicopter - landing sinks into the sea, because that would cut off the escape route and lost the game.

In general, players can win the game together only if they fulfill the mission and climb with four different artifacts in the luggage of the helicopter to successfully escape from the island. Artifacts, one of the player characters themselves, or even the entire island should descend before the game against the player wins.

Would they do anything players, the game would end after a few minutes. However, they have few opportunities to do something against the tide. You can move around the island according to their characteristics. Wherever they are, they can take against payment of matching cards, the corresponding artifact relics in or communicate to each other artifact cards. They can also "dry up" already half-submerged parts of the island, then turn back to your original page.

The Forbidden Island feels like a race against time. Almost always inexorably rise to more floods and threaten to overwhelm even the most remote corners of the island. Good cooperation of the players is unavoidable in order to not be a victim of the floods. Here the forbidden island is not as complex as other games in the genre, for example, by the same author originally "pandemic", but it is equally ruthless and will not tolerate big mistakes.

Year: 2011
Publisher: Schmidt Spiele, Game Wright
Author: Matt Leacock
Design: CB Canga
Players: 2-4
Age: 10 years
Duration: about 30 minutes

Tags: cooperative , Schmidt Spiele