Harald Korneliussen

Since my gaming friend kingdok had mentioned that he had had success playing this with his kids, I thought I would give it to my son as a slightly risky Christmas present.

In my FLGS, I found to my surprise that they had a Norwegian language edition of it – twice surprised, because I didn’t know it existed, and that gaming store is pretty US-centric (they tend to get the US versions of e.g. Queen games).

Even the title on the pretty metal box, Den forbudte øya, was embossed nicely.

My son loved the game, no doubt in part because of the well-translated tile names. I was a bit more disappointed by the translations inside the box. Among other things, it uses “brikke” (piece) both for location pieces and player pawns, creating some ambiguity at times. I could easily enough infer what was intended, though. You’d think they could afford a proofreader, when they could afford that nicely embossed box.

Tip to Knut at Vennerød forlag: IME Nils Håkon Nordberg’s translations for Days of Wonder have been very good; a translator who plays games and can get technicalities correct is a great thing.

The poetic, surreal artwork kind of reminds me of The Little Prince, for some reason. The artwork would certainly break this game if it wasn’t so rich, varied and beautiful.