How to Play
Dare to discover Forbidden Island! Join a team of fearless adventurers on a do-or-die mission to capture four sacred treasures from the ruins of this perilous paradise. Your team will have to work together and make some pulse-pounding maneuvers, as the island will sink beneath every step! Race to collect the treasures and make a triumphant escape before you are swallowed into the watery abyss!
About this Game
It’s a great honor to introduce the latest creation by cooperative game master, Matt Leacock. There are so many things we love about this unique game: from the rich illustrations, to the collaborative nature of play, to the innovative set of rules, to the infinite possibilities generated by the tiles and cards. Don’t be surprised if your pulse starts pounding faster soon after you start playing – it’s a game that instantly generates an electrifying atmosphere of tension and excitement!
Forbidden Island is easy to teach, has beautiful art and it appeals to the adventurer in all of us. The cooperative play makes it ideal for families, specially those with children. Be careful to allow everyone to make their own decisions. Sometimes, it's a little too easy for one person to "boss" the others around. Finally, the difficulty of the game can be adjusted to fit any crowd! This is a winner!
Posted by: Andrew MacLeod (3 reviews)
Date: 2011/02/01 Time: 2:21pm
First off, Forbidden Island is very visually appealing, and appealing in a tactile sense as well, since the four ancient artifacts are not only in bright colours, but are 3D as well. All this makes for a quite well-themed game, as you race across Forbidden Island, an island booby-trapped by the ancient Archaeans. More and more of the island sinks as each turn passes by. And if you get all four artifacts? You now have mastery over all of nature! MWAAH-HAAA-HAAA! Uh, that is, if you can get off the island: all of the players have to leave together from the helicopter landing pad (the aptly named, "Fools' Landing"), and that, too, runs the risk of sinking beneath the sea. You have been warned. The island consists of 24 tiles that can be arranged differently each time you play it, which is a major plus over FI's big brother, Pandemic. The game begins with six of the tiles flooded (flipped over to their watery blue side); but that's OK, since your team can run around shoring up flooded areas. However, if you fail to shore up a flooded area and it's flooded again, then that tile sinks forever beneath the waves....and that loses you the game, if it happens to be Fools' Landing. You also lose if some other types of tiles descend to Davey Jones' locker: a player needs to have four cards corresponding to a particular artifact in order to claim that treasure, but the treasure can only be found in two tiles specific to it. If those tiles are gone, and you still haven't claimed that artifact, you're sunk! So how do I get these treasure cards? And how do the tiles get flooded? At the end of your turn, you draw treasure cards....AND you draw flood cards. Your hand limit is five cards, and seeing as how you need four of a kind to claim a treasure, things are kinda tight. Flood cards you don't keep, but flood the area indicated on them. In the midst of the treasure deck, there's also three Waters Rise cards: whenever you draw one of these, the amount of flood cards you draw is increased by one...and the flood cards that you've already played go back ON TOP of the flood deck (similar to getting an epidemic in Pandemic). "Well, only three Waters Rise cards is a lot better than five or six epidemics", you say. No, not at all: the treasure deck (and Waters Rise cards with it) get reshuffled every time this pretty thin deck is exhausted. And, if enough Waters Rise cards are drawn, you're basically at tsunami level and have lost the game. Also, if flooding results in a player being on a totally lost tile, and there's no adjacent tile to flee to, that player drowns, and everyone loses. How does it compare with Pandemic, for those of you who have played Pandemic? Forbidden Island is a LOT lighter; the decisions are usually very easy to make. However, there are often times in Pandemic (especially early on) where you have a bit of breathing room. In Forbidden Island, on the other hand, you're usually running around, screaming in terror, from the get go. And speaking for myself, I find the theme in Forbidden Island far more appealing. So do you want a good, challenging, thoughtful game? Play Pandemic. Do you want plain and simply a very fun experience? Then play Forbidden Island. I now own both, and am very glad I do!
Posted by: Anonymous
Date: 2011/02/01 Time: 11:19am
First off, Forbidden Island is very visually appealing, and appealing in a tactile sense as well, since the four ancient artifacts are not only in bright colours, but are 3D as well. All this makes for a quite well-themed game, as you race across Forbidden Island, an island booby-trapped by the ancient Archaeans. More and more of the island sinks as each turn passes by. And if you get all four artifacts? You now have mastery over all of nature! MWAAH-HAAA-HAAA! Uh, that is, if you can get off the island: all of the players have to leave together from the helicopter landing pad (the aptly named, "Fools' Landing"), and that, too, runs the risk of sinking beneath the sea. You have been warned.
The island consists of 24 tiles that can be arranged differently each time you play it, which is a major plus over FI's big brother, Pandemic. The game begins with six of the tiles flooded (flipped over to their watery blue side); but that's OK, since your team can run around shoring up flooded areas. However, if you fail to shore up a flooded area and it's flooded again, then that tile sinks forever beneath the waves....and that loses you the game, if it happens to be Fools' Landing.
You also lose if some other types of tiles descend to Davey Jones' locker: a player needs to have four cards corresponding to a particular artifact in order to claim that treasure, but the treasure can only be found in two tiles specific to it. If those tiles are gone, and you still haven't claimed that artifact, you're sunk!
So how do I get these treasure cards? And how do the tiles get flooded? At the end of your turn, you draw treasure cards....AND you draw flood cards. Your hand limit is five cards, and seeing as how you need four of a kind to claim a treasure, things are kinda tight. Flood cards you don't keep, but flood the area indicated on them. In the midst of the treasure deck, there's also three Waters Rise cards: whenever you draw one of these, the amount of flood cards you draw is increased by one...and the flood cards that you've already played go back ON TOP of the flood deck (similar to getting an epidemic in Pandemic). "Well, only three Waters Rise cards is a lot better than five or six epidemics", you say. No, not at all: the treasure deck (and Waters Rise cards with it) get reshuffled every time this pretty thin deck is exhausted. And, if enough Waters Rise cards are drawn, you're basically at tsunami level and have lost the game. Also, if flooding results in a player being on a totally lost tile, and there's no adjacent tile to flee to, that player drowns, and everyone loses.
How does it compare with Pandemic, for those of you who have played Pandemic? Forbidden Island is a LOT lighter; the decisions are usually very easy to make. However, there are often times in Pandemic (especially early on) where you have a bit of breathing room. In Forbidden Island, on the other hand, you're usually running around, screaming in terror, from the get go. And speaking for myself, I find the theme in Forbidden Island far more appealing. So do you want a good, challenging, thoughtful game? Play Pandemic. Do you want plain and simply a very fun experience? Then play Forbidden Island. I now own both, and am very glad I do!
