bookwyrmm

The goal of this game is to plan a 10 day trip through Europe. Each of those ten days, you must either be in a country or on a plane or boat, and you cannot be in the same country for multiple consecutive days. To travel to another country, it must either be a) adjacent to the one you are in, b) reachable by boat, or c) be of the same color and thus reachable by plane. However, the boats and planes have some restrictions, too – boats can only travel on the body of water mentioned on them and planes have to be the color of the countries between which you are traveling. The winner is the first person to correctly complete a 10 day trip.

The game is very quick to learn (as all Out of the Box games are) and you do not need to have a good grasp of geography to play, but it does help, especially is traveling to adjacent countries or by boat. It is very important to get the best arrangement out of the cards you are dealt because once they are in the holder and game play starts, the only way to move them to a different slot is to discard to one of the three discard piles and hope that another player does not pick it up or cover it before you get a change to reclaim it and place it in a different day.

Yes, I admit, I did buy this game because it has penguins. But it is a ton of fun, too! This is one of the fastest learning games I have ever come across. It only has two steps – move penguin, pick up fish. I do agree that the game has a different feel depending on the number of players. With two players, it is much more of a strategy game, but with four, it is basically a free-for-all and plays even faster. In fact, it goes so fast that it takes longer to set up the tiles than to play the game. This is the only drawback. It is fun, competitive, and with its small size, easy to take along.

As an only child, I learned soon how to play games by myself. Most games involve some sort of creative adaptation in order to add the unpredictability that naturally comes when you have more than one mind playing. Not so with Forbidden Island. I found myself playing a great game by myself (using the max of 4 playing pieces) following the rule exactly. The beautiful artwork and high-quality pieces (at a very reasonable price) simply added to my enjoyment. As a co-op game, the players play against the game itself. This combined with an ever changing board allows for excellent replay value, whether you are like me and playing by yourself or actually have a group of friends who will play something other than typical party games. This is my first co-op, but it will definitely not be my last.

Definitely a game that is best played with people you know well. Knowing which word the judge will pick is key, and most fun when they do not pick the most logical, literal choice.