Forbidden Island Game Review & Rules

Adventure is you dare 2 to 4 players aged 10 and up

Forbidden Island is the first in a trilogy of adventure co-optative games. We first played with a family member on vacation. At first, the game seems overwhelming. There are a lot of steps to a turn and it felt like we would never win. But we got the hang of the game by the second time we played and then we bought our own copy.

Keep reading to see why we bought our own copy of this co-operative game. If you like the all-in-it-together games, check out the games Saboteur and the ones for younger kids Ants, Lost Puppies and Max.

Forbidden Island’s Premise

Like a lot of games on this level, Forbidden Island comes with a story. The story is that a ancient mystical empire could control the four elements—fire, wind, water, and earth by using treasures. However, they knew that they had to hide them. They hid the treasures on an island and designed it to sink if the wrong people were to explore. Now you are an explorer trying to be the first to find the treasure before the island sinks.

Object of Forbidden Island

To win the game, you must work together as a team to capture the four treasures and keep the island from sinking before you fly away.

Setup

First, you need to arrange the tiles in a grid and then place the treasure statues in the four corners. This is the game board.

Next, you separate the cards into their types. The first type is the adventure cards, these tell the players what special powers they have. Second are the flood cards. These cards have the same places as the tiles and are what dictates what sinks. Third are the treasure cards. These are the action cards.

Next, you set the water level. For a beginner game, the water level is set at the lowest level. As players get better at playing, the level is set higher for more difficult games.

Last, each player selects a game piece randomly. Each colour has a different power that is helpful while playing. The movers go on their home spaces on the board.

Playing Forbidden Island

To start, each player is dealt two treasure cards that are placed face up in front of them.

A player’s turn is broken up into three parts. First is to take up to three actions. Then you draw two treasure cards. Last you draw flood cards according to the water level.

Actions

There are four actions that a player can take.

First is to move. You can move your game piece to a tile that is beside the one you are on. Pawns can’t move diagonally unless your power allows you to.

Second is to shore up a tile. When a tile is flooded, it is flipped over to show a pale picture. When you shore up a tile, you flip it back over to the full colour picture.

Third is to give a treasure card to another player. For this to happen, you both need to be on the same tile.

Last is to capture a treasure. To do this a player must have four cards that match the treasure and be on a tile with that symbol.

Treasure cards

After your actions are done, you take two treasure cards off the pile. The treasure cards either allow you to collect the treasure or give you special moves. There are also water’s rising cards. When a water’s rising card is found, the water level is increased and the flood cards are shuffled and put back on top of the deck.

Flood Cards

After your actions and treasure cards, you will flip over flood cards according to the water level. When a card is turned over, the matching tile is either flipped over to flood or sunk and removed from the game. When a tile has sunk, it and the card are removed and put on the side.

Winning Forbidden Island

To win the game, you need to collect all of the treasures, get all players to the Fools Landing tile and use a helicopter treasure card to fly away.

Sounds easy but there are many ways to lose the game. First, the tiles that let you collect the treasures sink before you claim the treasures. Second, if Fool’s Landing tile sinks. Next is if a player is on a tile that sinks and there is no tile beside it. Last, if the water level reaches the top.

Increasing Difficulty

When you have won the beginner games, you can move the water level at the start of the game to make it hard.

What we Like

First, the quality of the game is great. Next, we like the co-optative play; it is always great when we can work together and win together. The game is set up so that players really have to work together and can chat and plan every move together. We also like that the game plays just as well as a two player as it does a three or four player game. Last, we like that each game is different between the different tile placements and player choices.

What We Don’t Like

First, there is a lot of steps to a player’s turn. It takes a lot playing for you to get the hang of it. Next, although each player having a special power is good, we found that it was too much to keep track of. We found that even after playing a few times, we were re-reading the instructions again and again.

Next, we found that although each game if different, it depends on where the Fool’s Landing card is in the stack if you will win or not. Once we figured this out, the interest in the game dimmed a little.

When the Water’s Up

Working together as a team will really pull your family together with this game. When you fly away with the treasure the whole group will cheer and be filled with a great sense of accomplishment. Although it takes time to learn all of the moving pieces of the game, we do recommend Forbidden Island to your Family Game Shelf if you like co-operative games and like to dig into a little bit more complicated games.

To see what other games we feel are worth a spot of the shelf, see our Recommendation page here. You can shop Forbidden Island here to add it to your Family Game Shelf. The game also has two other spin offs, Forbidden Desert and Forbidden Sky. Canadians can shop here.

Rating:

This is a Gamewright game, to see there catalog of games click here.

Pros: quality, co-optative, 2-3-4 player, multilevel
Cons: complicated to start
Mom: critical thinking, strategy, team work