Gamewright - Forbidden Island - Cooperative Strategy Survival Board Game, 2-4 Players

We're on a bit of a cooperative board game kick lately, and Forbidden Island did NOT disappoint! After loving Pandemic, we were looking for something similar, and this one was a blast. The whole "island sinking" thing really amps up the tension – you're constantly scrambling to keep tiles from flooding while trying to find the treasures. It's a really fun and unique mechanic.We played with four players, and it was the perfect amount of challenge. Each player has a different role with special abilities, so you really have to communicate and work together to succeed. There were definitely some tense moments where we thought we were going to get swamped, but we managed to pull through in the end! It was a really satisfying feeling to escape with all the treasures.The game is easy to learn, but there's still plenty of strategy involved. It's perfect for a family game night or a get-together with friends. We loved that it's cooperative, so everyone's working towards a common goal. If you're looking for a fun and engaging game that will have you on the edge of your seat, Forbidden Island is a great choice. Highly recommend it! Five stars!

This game is a blast! The Perfect Blend of stress and Cooperative play, the first time we played it we won and I don't think we've won ever since then LOL. It lulled us into a false sense of confidence! But the randomness of the different player classes and requiring people to work together and think quickly is a good family friendly trait to develop. This game will do that for you!

Travel: I wouldn't say this is the best for travel but it's not difficult. It's not the best because it is quite large of a box and if it were to be accidentally sat on or handled harshly it might dent or spill everywhere.Gift able: I first played this game because my dad brought it home from work a friend had loaned it to him to try. We (being me and my siblings) loved it we could not get enough of it. When he had to bring it back we were heartbroken. That Christmas I was overjoyed when I got it. This is a great gift and an even greater party game.Easiness: This game is super easy to learn but not boring to play. It was easy to understand the instructions and it's even easier to explain it to a friend. The rules are simple but a staple part of the game. Great for any age and I mean any my youngest brother played with my grandma and they both loved it.Overall: In all I adore this game It's great for a large group of people or even for just two people. The pictures are beautiful and enhance the game. The game can last from anywhere to 15-45. A must have for bored game lovers or if you are just bored.

Forbidden Island is a cooperative game where your a group of adventurers trying to get the magical artifact to save the world.As with all gamewright games, the components are stellar. If you have a huge collection of games, the tin is annoying to store with the rest, but you also probably aren’t reading reviews on Amazon. If you don’t, the tin looks nice. The insert is excellent. There’s a spot for everything and the game sets up quickly out of the box with a few shuffles or the tiles and two decks of cards. The art is beautiful and it looks great on the table. The artifacts themselves are very nice plastic molds.Game play is simple. The island is flooding. You need to search for the artifacts while preventing the island from sinking completely. Each turn you have 3 actions, which are nicely highlighted on the player aids and are as follows: move to adjacent tile, “shore up” a flooded tile by flipping to its unflooded side, give a card to a player on the same tile, or turn in 4 cards of an artifact on one of its two respective tiles to claim the artifact. Each adventurer has a special power to manipulate these rules, such as being able fly anywhere once a turn or dig up two tiles with one action. The game is won once all 4 artifacts have been claimed and everyone has made it back to the helicopter pad.Then, you draw two cards to your hand, and then draw cards from the island deck. Each island card is a tile on the grid. You flip it over to the flooded side. If it’s alreay flooded, it’s removed from the game.Thus, you have some strategic decisions with determine what tiles are worth saving. Not every tile is important. A central tile is important so you aren’t constantly having to circumnavigate it. An artifact tile is important because if one sinks you’ll have to go to another, possibly less convenient one, and if both sink and you haven’t gotten that artifact you lose. If the helicopter pad sinks, you lose.When you draw cards to your hand, you might draw a water rises tile. If this happens, you raise the danger level, which results in drawing more tiles that flood and, eventually, ends the game. You also put the already drawn cards back on top of the island deck, meaning those cards will come back up soon.All that to say, the game is good, but will be too light for most adult groups. It plays best with kids because of how straight forward it is. It’s relatively easy, but you can make it more difficult, and it’s a great gateway game.If that sounds fun to you, get it! If not, there are plenty of other cooperative games on the market. That being said, this game is great at what it’s intended for.