FallCon - A Cornucopia of Gaming

Synopsis: The Forbidden Island is sinking and you must find its precious artifacts before they are lost forever!

In this cooperative game, you and your allies must find the four idols and escape before the island sinks under your feet. For the mission to be successful, you must retrieve all 4 idols and escape via the helicopter pad. The loss of any team member, any artifact or the flooding of the helicopter pad would result in a embarrassing blemish on your adventurer resume (it's well known you aspire to become the next Indiana Jones).   

Forbidden Island has all the hallmarks of a great "gateway" game and serves as an excellent launching point to introduce families and friends into the boardgaming hobby. It is quick, easy to teach and learn, has gorgeous components and also has a low price point. Very few games will give you similar bang for the buck.

Cooperative games, like Forbidden Island are great for bringing in new players into gaming.  Cooperative mechanics remove the potential pitfall of pitting one player against another, as the group must work together to defeat the game itself.  One particularly nice aspect of Forbidden Island is its simple mechanism to alter the difficulty level of the missions. If you find the game too easy, just add another ‘Water Rises’ card to the deck and you will quickly find yourself scrambling to find a safe place to move! As a result, the game scales well with any age group and provides enough challenge to keep veteran gamers involved the whole time. You'll find yourself wanting to test your metal against the more difficult levels as you become proficient at moving around the sinking island.

I've personally enjoyed this with my kids and my fellow gamers. It is just a matter of scaling up the difficulty level and amount of advice offered based upon the gaming level of the group. I can highly recommended this game, especially as an introduction to cooperative games. For those looking for a little bit more challenge, and possibly a bit darker theme, I would highly recommend Pandemic and Pandemic: On the Brink, also designed by Matt Leacock.

Darren Bezzant