Joel

Top 10 reasons Dead of Winter hits a the sweet spot for me.

10 – It is as much fun to play with two people as it is to play with five.
9 – Playing multiple characters gives you a lot of options for your turn.
8 – The story elements and flavor text keep everyone immersed in the theme of survival.
7 – The possibility of a betrayer keeps everyone on edge.
6 – It’s a highly strategic game with a lot of rules but they are presented clearly enough that my 7 year old can run the game.
5 – The characters are plentiful and their abilities are varied.
4 – The crisis cards put just enough pressure on the group to cooperate but also leads to frustrations and doubts when someone isn’t contributing as much as the group thinks they should.
3 – The crossroads cards keep the player who just completed their turn engaged in the game because they are responsible for triggering it.
2 – Rotating the starting player each round means you’re not always the one at the end trying to clean up waste or complete the crisis objective because other’s before you have played more selfishly.
1 – The main objective cards allow for a “scratch your gaming itch” short session or a “settle in for the night” longer session.

Forbidden Desert has proved to be well worth the price at our table.

In Forbidden Desert, each player chooses a character that has a special ability or abilities. For example, the explorer can move orthogonally and diagonally, the climber can move through buried tiles, and the water carrier can distribute water to others.

The players are exploring the tiled board to excavate the four key pieces to the legendary flying machine. Each excavated tile will reveal a buried ruin of the ancient city or may provide one of the two coordinates for each of the four buried parts.

After each player turn, cards are drawn from the deck to move the sand storm around the board, advance the sand storm meter, and force the players to take drinks of water from their meager supplies. Balancing exploration with your water supply is a continual concern as each character has a different sized canteen.

Overall, I felt the game is very well balanced, provides a lot of replayability and is actually winnable. Everyone is on the edge of their seats by the end of the game to see if we can squeak out a narrow victory.