It’s Forbidden for a reason you guys….
Forbidden Desert is a cooperative game by Pandemic and Forbidden Island designer Matt Leacock. 2-5 players take on the roles of brave adventurers stranded in an ancient desert city and must work together to survive the elements and unearth a legendary flying machine to escape. It’s so much fun! Unlike Forbidden Island, where the island starts to sink and tiles disappear, the entire board stays in place. Instead, tiles are constantly moving and shifting like a sliding puzzle under the power of a huge sandstorm.On their turn, players will move and try to excavate the city to find the pieces and eventually construct the flying machine, After every player’s turn, they will draw from the Storm Deck. The Storm Deck represents the horrible sandstorm; these cards dictate which tiles move around and also contain a few special events such as “The Storm Picks Up” (increase the amount of storm cards drawn) or “The Sun Beats Down” (everyone not sheltered drinks water from their canteen). When a tile moves, you must place a sand dune token on top of the tile. When a tile has two or more sand dunes upon it, the tile is blocked and impassable until someone excavates it. Like Forbidden Desert’s predecessors, there are lots of ways to lose and one way to win. Players lose if any player’s canteen runs out of water, they run out of sand dune tokens, or the storm tracker reaches the skull and crossbones level. Win by finding and constructing the flying machine to escape!
Forbidden Desert is an excellent time! The pieces to the flying machine are great quality and fun to put together. Its a big hit at board game night at my house. The mechanics are similar yet, way different to Pandemic and Forbidden Island. Its also fun just to see how Pandemic’s mechanics evolved over the course of the three games. Its great and not as much of a bummer as Pandemic’s theme. You should probably look into this game if you haven’t done so already!
-Mikey