Inspired by the solo gaming experience of last week (my solo heroclix extravaganza), I went out & bought two cooperative games. I'll have to admit, I did this in hopes that my wife would like to play them too (more about that later). I got
Forbidden Island by Matt Leacock via Amazon this week and ventured to play it on Saturday. My first attempt was a failure as my play-time was interrupted by housecleaning, but when I finally had a quiet moment, I dug in and played. The concept is simple: get the treasure on the island & get off before it sinks into the abyss. The genre is fantasy as that the treasure is four magical items based on the elements. The artwork on the tiles is reminiscent of that on
Magic The Gathering cards.
 |
| The contents of the box... |
I found that this is mainly a card game using action cards as well as tiles. The tiles create the playing field & the action cards control the player's "resources" or treasure. The games pieces can be moved around the island to treasure locations where one of the four elemental treasures can be collected. I opened the box, looked at the playing pieces and decided to try a solo game using two randomly chosen playing pieces (there are six to choose from). Each of these, I discovered has special powers that help the players move, stop the island from sinking & collect treasure. The two I chose: The Navigator & The Diver. These two pieces are "movement" based: the Navigator can move other pieces and the Diver can move through flooded areas the other have to move around. Oh, yeah... the island is sinking! The tiles used to build the island are two sided with one side shaded blue to represent a flooded area. If an area is flooded twice in sinks into the abyss never to be seen again.
 |
| The playing field |
With the playing field set, I ventured onto the island in search of treasure. Red wine does not come with the game, but I suggest a light Cabernet to compliment the game's rich flavor. The game starts with six tiles flooded. Players draw treasure cards, three of which are called "waters rise" which returns the flood cards to the top of the "flood pile." This creates a situation where flooded tiles can be flooded a second time and disappear from the game.
The object of the game seems simple: prevent the treasure tiles, and the helicopter tile from sinking sinking before you can escape. Players do this by "shoring up" (turning back over adjacent flooded tiles) or drawing a special card (sandbags) which for shoring as a free action. The first solo game I played took 45 mins. (not the 30 mins. stated on the box). I managed to win the game. For the next game I decided to try playing four pieces at once. This offered more & interesting options for game play. All in all, this game works well as a solo game, although it seemed too easy to win to me.
 |
| I win!!! |
This is how the playing field looked at the end of my first game. Notice that most of the tiles are flooded or gone into the abyss. Notice also that the red wine was finished.
I know that this is solo gaming time, but I did buy this game to play with my wife. This is our first foray into cooperative games, so I looked for a simple one and
Forbidden Island fits the bill. Once we got the rudiments down, the game action became smooth. We reasoned out each move together in hopes of winning. It was exciting as the flood waters rose and time seemed to be running out... Of course we lost, the island flooded with our game pieces trapped and the treasure unclaimed. My initial assessment of the games ease was wrong. We both enjoyed the game thoroughly. Our first try at cooperative gaming was as fun as it was challenging. Next up:
Pandemic!
 |
| Risk on steroids? |
