Let's Work Together
Are you looking for a game that your family can play together, working towards a common goal, rather than competing against one another? Cooperative games can be a welcome respite from the antagonism of the usual competitive tabletop fare. Such games are great for fostering cooperation and teamwork in children as well as for allowing younger players to be included in gameplay.
Forbidden Island is a cooperative game that tasks players with working together to fulfill the shared goal of exploring a mysterious island in search of four elemental treasures. Your team must locate each treasure and make it to the helicopter to escape the island as it sinks around you. The game's mechanics expertly build a sense of adventure and tension as you watch locations around the island slip into the ocean, thwarting your attempts to succeed in accomplishing the team's mission.
The island itself is made up of a number of tiles that are laid out on the table in rows and columns. Since the pattern of tile placement occurs randomly, each playthrough yields a new layout for the island, thus lending a high level of replayability to Forbidden Island. Players, called "Adventurers," are given a role card, such as Pilot, Diver, or Engineer, which grants a special ability. Each ability has the potential to greatly benefit the team, but cooperating to combine and time the usage of these powers is key to successfully defeating the game. On his or her turn, an adventurer can take three actions, used to move around the island, shore up flooded locations, or interact with the treasures. At the end of each turn, more island locations slip under water, represented by flipping the tile over to its blue-hued flooded side. As the game progresses, the stakes are raised and already flooded tiles will begin to sink, meaning they are removed from play completely. There are several ways to lose Forbidden Island. For instance, if a treasure sinks into the ocean before being collected or one of the Adventurers is lost to the watery depths, then the entire group suffers defeat. However, if the players are able to capture all four treasures and make it to the helipad to catch a helicopter off the island, they claim a team victory.
Forbidden Island can provide quite a challenge as victory is never certain, even at the Novice difficulty. There is an element of randomness at play, so that depending on the placement of the location tiles and the shuffling of cards, some playthroughs could be more punishing than others. The mechanism that controls the rising water level on the island involves drawing at the end of each turn from a Flood deck. This can trigger particularly devastating outcomes essentially due to (un)luck of the draw, yielding a cascade of bad situations that results in a team loss. However, I would say that this lack of serendipity happens infrequently and that a typical game feels well-balanced and winnable. More often than not, Forbidden Island ratchets up the tension and excitement smoothly, culminating in an endgame scenario that doesn't come across as cheap, win or lose.
What makes the gameplay of Forbidden Island stand out is the collaborative aspect that requires a true team effort and stimulates communication among all the players at the table. For families with children, this can be a great game to teach and develop teamwork skills. On each player's turn, the entire group can discuss which actions the Adventurer should take in order to ensure completion of the mission. Success hinges upon division of labor, with individual players moving to different parts of the island to shore up flooded tiles while periodically meeting up in the same area to exchange pieces of the treasures. Balancing immediate needs against the long-term goal of collecting the treasures and leaving the doomed island requires constant communication and effective strategizing on the part of the entire team. Since all information is openly shared among the Adventurers, younger players can easily keep up in Forbidden Island. Older siblings or adults can coach them through the decision-making process, yet allow them the freedom to perform the agreed upon actions themselves, thus maintaining independence and a sense of personal accomplishment when they contribute to the team effort. The game box states that Forbidden Island is for Ages 10+, but my six-year-old regularly plays the game without any confusion, difficulty, or a sense of being "left out" by older players.
There is, however, one potential downside to the cooperative style of gameplay in Forbidden Island: alpha gamers can commandeer the decision-making and ruin the fun for the rest of the group. An alpha gamer is someone who tends to single-handedly take charge of the direction of the game, dictating to other players how they should act on their turns. This, obviously, leads to limited choice and reduced involvement in the game for non-alphas. Not to mention the fact that nearly all enjoyment is drained from a cooperative game hijacked by a single alpha personality. Forbidden Island works best when every member of the group is contributing to the choices that are being made.
Forbidden Island is a great game for families as it can bring everyone together to work towards a shared goal, rather than pitting parents and children against one another. Although competitive play can be fun, as well as instructive, there are times when I just want to team up with my kids and enjoy solving a problem together.
