Forbidden Island 🏝
This is not your usual tropical island getaway...
So far in the Teamwork series we’ve helped you and your kids get in sync with The Mind, look out for each other in Regicide, and put your heads together to escape Unlock!
For our final recommendation in this series, your team will need to combine all of the skills above in a thrilling adventure in… *drum roll* …Forbidden Island!
Forbidden Island is a co-operative game for 2-4 adventurers searching for treasure on an uncharted island that is slowly sinking. Each player will have to use their character’s unique ability to collect the treasures and escape the sinking island together. If just one of you doesn’t make it off the island, then you all lose, so you’ll have to make sure to work together!
Why play Forbidden Island?
There are many reasons to love Forbidden Island.
First off, the game is visually gorgeous. The artwork is stunning, the pieces look and feel great and visually it’s easy to tell players apart and which tiles are flooded or not.
Forbidden Island is also a great family game. Although the recommended player age starts at 10 years on the box, the game can be played with younger players due to its co-operative gameplay. You can make suggestions to younger children and work through different moves with them (hoping they’ll pick the right one!) and the game can still hold up well.
One other great thing about Forbidden Island is replayability. Every game you play the island will be different as you randomise the island tiles each time. This means also that the treasures will be in different locations. There are also 6 roles to choose from, each with its unique abilities. Want even more? You could adjust the difficulty of the game, from Novice to Legendary. So every game you play you will get different priorities and combinations of strength and weakness, and your team will need to rethink your strategy in order to succeed!
Overview
Age: 10+ years
Skill Level:
Teamwork: 10+ years
Logical Thinking: 10+ years
Communication: 8+ years
Players: 2-4
Duration: ~30 mins
If you’ve played the board game Pandemic then much of the game will feel familiar to you (the same person who designed Pandemic also designed Forbidden Island).
After a player has taken their turn of up to three actions (i.e., move, shore up, give a treasure card or capture a treasure card) then players draw 2 treasure cards.
Each turn you draw treasure cards and need a four of the same type to claim that treasure.
After a player draws their treasure cards then it’s time for the island to flood! Players will draw flood cards equal to the current water level indicated on the water level and flip over each corresponding island tile.
A waters rise card will sometimes appear randomly and when that happens, the water level will increase making the flooding quicker each turn.
Players do have a chance to shore up flooded tiles, but if a flooded tile is flooded again then it’s lost forever, making it more difficult to navigate around the island and collect the treasures.
The island starts off easy to navigate but a few turns in you’ll have to make some interesting choices in terms of whether to go for treasures, or shore up the island so you can still make your escape at the end of the game.
Where to get it
Forbidden Island should be easy to find in your local game stores.
If you want the comfort of ordering online and having it delivered to your doorstep, please consider buying at this affiliate link, which will support Game & Learn.
How to use this game
Learn the game
If you haven’t played many board games before, it may seem like there is quite a bit to learn. This game certainly has the most rules compared to our first three recommendations.
The rule book is great though and has excellent diagrams to help show you how to setup and play the game. If you are a veteran gamer, it won’t take you long to learn.
However, a How to Play video is definitely handy too. We think this 5-min video created by The Comic Hunter on YouTube is nice and clear.
Tell the story
You can set the story by reading the first paragraph from the instruction manual and adjusting it to suit your audience. For example:
In Forbidden Island, we are a team of brave adventurers, and we have just discovered this mysterious island that is not charted on any map.
Legend has it that hidden on this island there are 4 treasures each controls an element, Fire, Earth, Wind, and Water.
However, as soon as we step out of our helicopter we can tell that this island is alive, and it will stop at nothing to protect its treasures.
The island begins sinking! We need to hurry and get all 4 treasures, return to the helipad with together, and escape before this island floods completely!
Learning Focus
With Forbidden Island teamwork is absolutely necessary to win the game.
So if you don’t work together, then there’s a good chance you’ll lose which makes this game great for practicing cooperation.
Along with cooperation, effective communication, sharing the workload and task prioritisation are other important skills that you can practice with this game.
When it comes to communicating, it’s important for each player to share not just their current treasure cards but also their ideas for current goals and strategies.
Encourage your child to communicate their thoughts by asking:
“What do you think we should do next?”
“I’m thinking of doing this, do you think that’s a good idea?”
Sharing the workload is key to the game’s success, this means making sure all your characters are working together.
You can discuss strategies for working together by asking:
“My character can do this <explain your character>, what can yours do?”
“How do you think our abilities could work well together?”
“I’m thinking we need to do this next <explain what you want to do next>, how can we work together to achieve it?”
Finally, learning what tasks are best to tackle next in the game will help lead your team to victory. This involves practicing thinking ahead and visualising different possible outcomes.
Encourage thinking ahead and task prioritisation by asking a question like:
“I think by my next turn these tiles might be flooded, what do you think we can do to prepare for that?”
If of course you don’t manage to win, make sure to provide encouragement and strategise for next time:
“Okay, that one didn’t work out but that’s okay, what do you think we should do differently next time?
“Wow that was a hard one, too bad we didn’t win but I am still so proud of you in the way that you kept on trying and the way we worked together as a team!”
Pro tips to game and learn
Start easy
To help with learning and to give you a good chance at an early victory, start at the easiest level in the game. You can always ramp up the difficulty once you’ve worked out the different characters and strategies.
The other tip to make the game a little bit easier to start with is to set the Helipad tile 🚁 somewhere in the middle first, and then build the island randomly around it. We found that if the Helipad is on the edge of the island, it can make the game more difficult.
Finally, we found the Diver role 🤿 was only good in very specific situations, which means it might not have a chance to shine every game. We recommend taking it out for your first game.
Share the workload
With games where you’re making decisions together as a group it can be easy for one person to take control and guide the others. When this happens, the other players might become passive players who just follow orders. Try to encourage everyone to share their ideas and strategies.
Try different combinations
Because this game is different each time and doesn’t take too long to play, you have the ability to try different combinations of roles and strategies to see what works best. You can randomise player roles to begin with but then feel free to let your children choose their favourite roles in the future.
Achievement Sheet
We created an achievement sheets to challenge your team a little further! Try completing all these Forbidden Island related achievements!
Before you go…
We hope you enjoyed our fourth game recommendation in the teamwork series! Please find the other newsletters in the teamwork series here:
Arrows and Teamwork - The importance of teamwork and why board games can help us effectively teach it
The Mind - An excellent, silent teamwork game
Regicide - Play with just a pack of cards!
Unlock! - An escape room in a box!
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Until next time, Game and Learn with Forbidden Island! 🏝
Great write up! The Forbidden series is so fantastic for children with so many transferable life skills