After my play of Forbidden Island, I think the most interesting aspect of the game is how quickly the difficulty increases because of the way it creates anxiety and urgency in players. Just like how a boat sinks faster the more water accumulates within it, the island sinks faster the higher the difficulty, or the further along players are in the game. There are two ways the water level card creates this effect. The first is through the design, where the gradient between colors grows shorter and darker despite numbers 2, 4, and 5 having the same exact number of lines or the same number of “Water Rises” cards possible flood cards pulled from the deck. The other way that the difficulty card adds to the game is by having a visual marker of what state players are currently playing.
The visual marker is essential because it’s as if players are sitting in a dunk tank, unsure of when the ball will hit the target next, because players cannot know when they will pull a “Water Rises” card. The significance of the “Water Rises” card is great because it increases the difficulty. The card puts all the recent cards of islands that are sinking back onto the top of the draw deck, and if they reach another gradient, they have to pick up a greater number of flood cards which is listed on the right side of the difficulty card. This brings all players one step closer to losing the game, which by the way, if one player loses, they all do. Having the sinking island cards at the top is very dangerous because when drawn again, the island tile gets removed from the game. Losing a tile means a path to a relic or the helicopter out may sink, causing players to lose the whole game.
However, due to the individual player and card abilities, there are strategies in place to maneuver around lost tiles or long distances. For example, a player uses a helicopter card to move all players to a tile or uses the pilot to get all relics with the flight ability. Personally, I think that the power of the player abilities should decrease despite the great difficulty of the game due to the rapidly increasing water levels. The strategies created from the abilities make the game a little less fun and more mechanical because cards like the Messanger would be less likely to move due to their focus on distributing cards between players. Instead of encouraging the abilities, I think the game should encourage risk and exploration by giving players a greater number of actions per turn. Although, I might have a change in opinion of the player abilities and think they are perfect as they are if I had played other difficulties besides novice.
I will say the abilities effectively encourage collaboration between players since each one is good at or able to perform the necessary actions to win the game. Without them, players are much more likely to play separately from each other instead of discussing a plan after the flood cards are drawn, but part of the reason why I think the player abilities should be weakened is because I prefer to play games that way. However, the collaboration between all players and the dependency shared between all of them makes winning very satisfying and losing very frustrating. I feel that perfectly demonstrates the success of Forbidden Island because it created an imaginary space for people to care about the constructed obstacles and goals of the world. Even though I prefer to play differently, I still had a wonderful time playing and look forward to the next time I will.
