Designer: Matt Leacock
The goal of Forbidden Desert is pretty straightforward: Build an Airplane. Wait, what?
Forbidden Desert is a coop game where the party is trapped in the desert, and seeking the remnants of an airplane in order to escape. Each hero will have abilities that helps the party manage their water, search for the parts, move quickly around the board, and ultimately escape.
Interesting Mechanic: A Shifting Board. In most coop games, the board is relatively static. However, in this one, where you can go is limited. There may be too much sand in a location for you to traverse. On top of this, the board itself can shift – at the end of the player’s turn, he draws a Sand Storm card, which adjusts the board by moving around the tiles, and possibly reburying those tiles under sand (which players may need to adjust.
Interesting Mechanic: Part Clues. Players have to dig randomly to find the parts they need, but they don’t find the objects themselves. They find clues – one clue will give the horizontal position and the second will give the vertical, which allows you to triangulate on the part’s position. This works well with the grid-based foundation of the search.
Forbidden Desert (and it’s little brother, Forbidden Island) is a lot of fun, and provides a simpler and yet crazier coop experience than Pandemic, and is a game I find ideal for introducing new gamers to the concept of coop gaming.
(Photo Credit: Board Game Duel)
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