We’ve had a few Board game recommendation requests lately so here’s another. Are these games fun? Do they work well as two player games? I know they are cooperative and saw them both played on Tabletop but curious if anyone here has played them and what they thought.
I own them both (and there is a rumor that a third title is about to be announced). I think they’re good games, but, like pretty much every other “cooperative” game I have seen, they lend themselves to a situation where one player ends up being the “team captain” and coordinates everybody’s moves, turning it into a glorified solitaire game.
Two players could work, although I think it would work much better if each player played two different characters.
I’ve played both. I like Forbidden Desert more than Forbidden Island though I’ve never played either on anything other than Very Easy or Easy.
They’d be fine as a two player game, but I think I would recommend each player playing two characters so that you’ve got more options for movements.
They announced it last week. “Forbidden Sky” No details yet. I think Desert is better because there’s more exploration. The fact that tiles are all covered up at first helps prevent one person from deciding what to do.
See my response in the Pandemic thread!
I think I read someone’s idea here of, in cooperative games, limiting communication as a way to prevent one player from taking over. Three possible ideas:
- On your turn, you can choose who speaks, and ask them for advice.
- You can only speak on your turn, but you can lay out your ideal plan of action, which others may take or ignore as they see fit.
- A combination of the above.
One other thing I was thinking, in games like Forbidden Island where you have cards, would be to introduce some secrecy to the game. I don’t quite remember how it’s played. If cards are achieved randomly, then they could be face-down. When it’s time to trade, you could ask who wants to trade, and other players could volunteer.
I dunno–something like that. It seems to me that a co-op game in which everyone is operating with imperfect information might make the whole thing a little less prone to quarterbacking.
Sure; Or you could play a game designed for simultaneous decision making so that no one is sitting around bored and wincing, thinking “Oh god oh god, if they don’t make the right move, we’re going to lose and I know what it is but I’m not allowed to tell them.”
That’s the fundamental problem with communication limits.
Forbidden Island is basically Pandemic with simpler rules. Good for a first co-op, but I wouldn’t really recommend it over Pandemic. If you want simpler I’d probably go for Pandemic the Cure over it for a Pandemic variant.
Forbidden Desert was a bit more interesting, but I’ve only played it once and it involved a 9 year old that didn’t realize there were teammates.
There are games that have done something similar. For example, in Haggis you can see everyone’s cards except your own, but can’t talk directly about them. There are lots of other ways to deal with the alpha player too. Games have used speed elements, traitors, randomness, complexity, individual goals, hidden information etc… Alpha player is a Pandemic problem (and really only if the group dynamics make it a problem) but I don’t think it necessarily a co-op problem.
I’ve played both, each time with my kids. They’re the games my brother (who is a real board games geek) brings out for kids who are smart enough for games with more than basic rules, but aren’t ready for competitive or complex strategy games.
Both games involve a lot of luck, and lots of simple trade-off choices (e.g. do I spend a move digging a bit more sand, or get under cover just to be safe). Since the win-condition is that everyone survives, they are a good alternative to competitive games. Players need to co-ordinate their actions to achieve a common goal, rather than beat the other players.
My current ranking of co-operative games (noting that I’ve never played Pandemic, which is usually held out to be the best):
Betrayal at house on the hill (usually involves one player as a traitor, or an every-person-for-themselves finish)
Dead of Winter (co-operative, but with private individual goals as well as the team goal and the possibility of a traitor)
Arkham Horror (complex rules, lots of randomness, too many pieces and fidgety rules)
I’ve played and enjoyed them both. A similar game is Escape from 100 million BC, which is fun, but is VERY complex. It’s in an awkward place in that its a casual cooperative game, so should appeal to generally casual players… but it has LOTS of rules minutiae and little pieces. Still, GREAT flavor, and if you l like the forbidden games, you might like it.
It’s also fundamentally bad. You spend the first half the game wandering aimlessly from room to room hoping to randomly get stuff that will be useful to you in the 2nd half, but you have no idea what you’ll need to do or where the things are that you will need to do it. It’s barely better than Monopoly in terms of giving players informed decisions until the very end, and at that point, 90% of the time, one side or the other will be in a position where they are practically guaranteed to win.
I haven’t actually played this one, but it’s one of the classic Fantasy Flight Games “million pieces” games with tons of randomness and lots of complexity that doesn’t really add a lot of depth to the strategic space. I feel like this one is one of those games that impress people a lot if they like complex games but don’t have a lot of board game experience, but which people who actually know better don’t seem to like all that much.
I stand by my recommendation of Spirit Island as a better co-op than any of these, yes, including Pandemic.
My son and daughter are 14 and 13, respectively, and we got Forbidden Desert for Christmas. To keep it from one person leading everyone, I make sure on their turn, they have to come up with a plan and how it fits into the overall plan. My son was fortunate enough to find out what happens when you make a plan, and everyone follows the plan, and then we lose 
Tends to be a hard game for 3 people to win. Plus, while we haven’t won yet, I’m thinking we really wouldn’t want to play after winning. Does anyone play after having won the game?
Don’t have Desert, but do have Island. It was our first cooperative game and has been played quite a bit over the last 5 years.
I like it because it’s fast to set up and play. It takes strategy to win but nothing overly complex so no really long discussions.
It is nicely balanced so we’ve won many games on the very last possible turn with the island crumbling around us. They were memorably exciting.
Forbidden Island was our first Cooperative Game, so it gets more fondness than Forbidden Desert. Thematically, I like Forbidden Island more since the island slowly disappears as you play, which is exciting and great fun. We play as two player often. We started with straight up two player, then moved on to two player with 4 characters in the game. I think 4 is harder than 2, but it has been a while.
Forbidden Island can be made harder by starting the flooding at a higher level, but you can also create different shaped islands with the tiles.
Then we moved onto Pandemic…
I’ve played both and have Desert. They’re a little lighter than Pandemic, but very similar mechanically. I’d rank Desert highest of the three, with Island as the lowest but still fun.
That’s a fair description, but whether it’s bad or not depends what you’re looking for from a game. When playing with a group with very uneven skill levels, having uninformed decisions and a story keeps it more interesting than a purely mechanical game.
I’m still in search of my ideal co-operative game: where individual skill helps the whole team (i.e. where choices are informed and matter), where co-operation matters without one person becoming the QB, and where the outcome is influenced by the whole game but is in doubt until the end.
I guess, but I pretty much feel like if I’m not going to make any informed decisions, I might as well just play Yahtzee or something and stop pretending.
Check out Spirit Island; I think you’ll be pleased. Though I think you need the expansion to really get “outcome is in doubt until the bitter end” - the base game, usually you can see the end in sight before you get there.
Wanted to post a update. I bought Forbidden Island and have played it several times with my girl friend. We each played two characters as was recommended. Really enjoyed it. Lost once and won twice and even the game we lost was fun (the meter got to the top while we still had one more artifact to collect). The game was really inexpensive but is well made. The parts are very high quality.
For Valentine’s day she bought me (really us :)) Forbidden Dessert. We haven’t played yet but are looking forward to it.
Does Forbidden Dessert involve opium laced brownies?
Oops <blush> 