Forbidden Desert is a great game with family or friends. It is very easy to learn but very challenging to win. It does involve a good amount of luck, and good team work.
Setup
The game is setup like you see above. Each player chooses a character, each of which have a special ability. One has the ability to share water and get more water (a vital resource). Some characters are more useful than others but a good team is more important than the characters you pick.
Once everyone chooses a character and the board is setup, you each get four actions per turn.
Possible actions
- Move
- Remove Sand
- Excavate
- Pick up Part
The object of the game is to find all the parts to this mystical flying machine, and escape the desert. You find clues to the location of each part by excavating a tile once all the sand has been removed. The clues are simply a pair of cards that direct you to a tile that the piece should be found. The first card tells you what row the card is in, and the second is what column. The piece isn't actually there, you just have to go to that tile to retrieve it.
After each player takes their turn, you flip storm cards based on how high the storm currently is. These storm card cause two problems, they create more sand and force players to drink. If anyone runs out of water, everyone loses. If any tile has more than 1 sand on it, it becomes un-blockable unless you use an action to remove sand. Storm cards can also increase the storm when you draw Storm Picks Up, as the storm picks up, you will start to draw more storm cards after each turn increasing the chance of additional sand and having to drink water.
You can also find special equipment cards that help your team along the way. For example a sun shield that prevents you having to drink on a turn if you get the Sun Beats Down card. You can also find one that allows you to travel to another tile anywhere on the board and a free two sand clean up card. These cards do not take up your four action slots so they are very valuable.
Along the way you team's water supply will start to get low, there are a few tiles when excavated have a chance of hiding water. Anyone on the tile when the water is found can fill their canteen.
Game End
The game goes on struggling to the find the remaining parts, dealing with the endless build up of sand and trying to avoid running out of water. Once all pieces are found to build the flying ship, you must find the take off zone and gather all party members to this spot, doing so wins the game.
Forbidden Desert is a team oriented game, where all party members have to work together or lose. The game is made by Gamewright, a very popular game publisher. They have another version of the game called Forbidden Island which I am not sure what the difference is as I never played it. From the looks of it is very similar but ocean themed.
The game is a lot of fun, but is very difficult as you can easily be overwhelmed by sand and the lack of water supply. The more players will frequently make the game more difficult because you draw more storm cards.
The game can be found on Amazon for $23.35 shipped and is a great pick.
All images are from Amazon product pages unless otherwise mentioned