Last month I gave away my copy of
Forbidden Island to my niece, Erin. As a replacement I bought Forbidden Desert
and this weekend our friends, Val and Chris, came round to try it out. The game
is obviously of a similar style; it is co-operative, searching for objects to
escape the desert, whilst the game does all it can to hinder and kill the
players. Tiles don’t disappear from the game (unlike the Forbidden Island) but
are instead buried under sand, which players need to clear to allow movement
and excavation. To find the locations of the hidden objects, the majority of
tiles must be excavated because the desired location is at the crossing point
of two directional tiles for each object. A blank, Sandstorm, tile moves around
the board, adding sand and moving the other tiles. The Sandstorm increases in
ferocity and all the while the players are forced to consume their valuable
water. The timing of collective visits to potential wells is a crucial decision
and the Watercarrier character is I think essential to surviving. The game does
provide a range of useful tools for the players to find and the timing of use
of these one-shot tools is again important.
We played two games, both set at the Standard (rather than
Novice) level, and we failed in both! In each game we only gathered 2 of the 4
objects, and our deaths resulted from mis-timing our visits to wells to
replenish water. I think we need to spend some more time working out our strategy
and we need to be more focussed on the risk of water usage. The game plays fast
and very well. My initial feeling is that it is more difficult than Forbidden
Island but this may be incorrect because once we had worked a strategy for
Forbidden Island, then it became easier. All-in-all, I am happy with the new
game and look forward to playing more often.
To finish our game session we returned to our favourite, Dungeon
Petz. Always an enjoyable experience. This time Chris won primarily by efficiently
matching his pets to potential customers, and getting his imps on the auction
square to increase his victory point multiplier. We all seemed to have ‘poo’
mountains which resulted in ‘sad’ pets. We rarely have pets escaping, but 2 of
Elaine’s imps were hospitalised whilst restraining them.
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