Gaming with Grandma - 122

Another Saturday morning gaming with my mum (AKA Grandma) and 9 year old daughter Maddie. Our game of choice today was the recently acquired Forbidden Island by Matt Leacock, the designer of Pandemic.

Players in this game play explorers searching an island for four powerful artifacts. They must locate all four artifacts and lift off the island in a helicopter to win the game. The only problem is that the island is quickly sinking into the ocean and the players must work cooperatively to shore up flooded areas and find the artifacts.

The island - pale blue tiles are flooded and the gaps are tiles that have sunk

There are six different roles randomly assigned to the 2-4 players. Each role has special abilities to assist in the mission. In this our first game Grandma was the Engineer, Maddie was the Explorer and I was the Diver.

There is also a water level track. We started off on the Novice level which starts the water at the lowest level.

The mechanics are fairly straightforward with players taking up to three actions, taking two treasure cards and then taking a certain number of flood cards depending on the current water level. Maddie quickly picked this up and was soon suggesting actions for Grandma and I. I was pleased to hear her exclaim during the game "This is really exciting" and "This is fun".

We went on to win our first game at Novice level.

Later that afternoon after Grandma had left Maddie requested another game with just the two of us. We started at Normal level with her being the Pilot and me the Messenger. We did win, but it was fairly close. We'll up the difficulty to Elite level in our next game.