Gamewright is a board game publisher that has been making high quality family games since 1994. Their games encourage learning and having fun. Each one is strongly themed to capture the imaginations of kids and adults, and usually contain plenty of humor or goofy components (especially the artwork). The rules are always easy to follow and include a note from the publisher about the theme and/or narrative behind the game, which supply a nice thoughtful element. Gamewright games are widely available, from your local game shop to big box stores like Target and Walmart. Their games provide a welcome alternative to the traditional family game fare one might fight on the toy store shelf.
I own 25 Gamewright games, by far the most from a single publisher. They were probably the first publisher I started noticing as I accumulated more of their games and came to trust that a Gamewright game would be enjoyable. I bought at least half of them before I even had kids for my wife and I to play together, since the low-key stakes are more in her style of non-confrontational gaming. Since these are all family games, there’s not a lot of vicious attacking your opponents but still enough ways to affect the outcome of each game.
I also enjoy that a lot of these games can be played with alternative rules. Many of them actually include variants for younger and/or older players. But in addition to those official rules, my kids have fun just playing with the components and making up their own rules. That means some of these games can be treated like toys, which is a great option for younger kids.
One more bit of information before I dive into the individual games. I have a seven year old son and a five year old daughter. My son really started playing board games within the past year. I think it was Ticket to Ride First Journey and chess that jumpstarted his interest. I’m amazed at how quickly he picks up the rules to most games (#humblebrag). My daughter doesn’t have as much interest in board games, which is perfectly fine, but does mean a lot of my experience with these games comes from playing two player, either with my wife or my son.
Since I play most of these games with my seven year old son, I had him rank the 21 games he’s played. I was surprised by some of his choices, especially compared to my own opinions. He didn’t provide much commentary for his choices, so it’s mostly just a relative numerical ranking.
In case you missed it, you should go read the first part of my Gamewright game list.
Ages 8+
Castle Keep
Castle Keep is one of the games I included in my article about educational games. You play to be the first to build a complete castle composed of tiles in a 3×3 grid, with the outside eight tiles forming the walls and the interior tile being the keep. Each tile has one of three colors and one of three “shapes”, except the keep which only has a color. Each turn you draw two tiles. Then you can either add to your castle or attack an opponent’s castle. To add to your castle, you must place a tile next to a tile that matches either the color or shape or both. So a red round turret can connect to any red wall regardless of its shape or any round wall regardless of its color. It’s a little difficult to describe the “shapes”, but we settled on “round”/”wavy”, “straight”, and “crooked”. To attack your opponent you simply play a tile identical to one in the opponent’s castle. The mean part is that not only is that tile destroyed but all adjacent tiles of the same color are destroyed. I’m not sure why they added that aspect to the attack; it only punishes matching color, so it indirectly rewards matching shape instead.
The focus of this game is color and shape matching. The color matching is easy enough. Matching the shapes can be tough since you have to know how each shape is represented differently on the wall tiles versus the turret tiles. Each shape is distinct, though, so once you remember the pairings between walls and turrets it’s not a huge deal.
The theme fits well with building a castle wall around a central keep. You’re mostly just looking at walls and turrets, so there’s not a ton of personality. It might have felt more thematic and dramatic to include some sort of different tiles for attacking your opponent; it’s rather abstract to simply play the same tile to build your castle and tear down your opponent’s castle.
The components are nice thick cardboard tiles. Given the small set of different tiles there’s not much to differentiate each one, but that’s fine. Having a different illustration for each keep could have spiced up things a little, and since the keep only has to match a color not a shape it wouldn’t have modified the game play at all. But this game can take a beating without breaking down. I like how the tiles are thick enough not to overlap, but they can slide around on your playing surface and slightly break up your grid layout if you’re not careful.
My son’s ranking: 17 out of 21. I was disappointed in this one. I enjoy this game more than he does, and it’s one of the few games my wife will request to play with us.
Combo King
Combo King is basically a way better form of Yahtzee. Rather than having a checklist of different dice combinations that you need to work through to win, this game gives you a hand of cards that you need to empty. Each card has a different goal, a different set of playing parameters, and a different reward. Some of the goals are the same as Yahtzee, such as roll two pair and three of a kind. Most are new, such as rolling a specific range of totals. There are also cards that allow more than one player to attempt it at the same time, such as who can roll snake eyes first. Each card specifies how many dice you get to roll, how many players participate, how many times you get to roll, and whether you get to retain rolled dice across rolls. If you complete the goal you discard the card and take some chips. You can use the chips to buy bonuses such as re-rolling or taking an additional turn. The first player to discard all their cards wins, no matter how many chips anyone has.
The focus of this game is rolling dice and weighing your odds of succeeding at each card’s goal. You quickly learn that rolling a total near the middle is much easier than a total at the low or high end. You’ll also learn how hard it is to roll a specific sequence of numbers. That’s really a skill transferable only to other dice games, so this does feel like a pure game than many other Gamewright games.
The theme is basically gambling. You use poker chips to buy bonuses. The cards are standard size. The dice are standard six-sided dice. It’s all stuff you’d find in any casino. There’s a little bit of cartoonish with the hand on each card indicating how many times you get to roll, but that’s about it. We don’t even own the original box anymore so we don’t have the cartoon gambler in his leisure suit chucking dice.
The components, as I just laid out, are standard gambling equipment. The chips are nice although not as weighty as poker players might like. The cards are packed with a ton of information but it’s laid out very well and consistent across all of them. The dice are just regular dice. It is nice that you could replace the chips and dice if you lose any of them.
My son’s ranking: 20 out of 21. I’m a little surprised by this one. He’s only played it once, though, and I believe he lost to my wife. He’s not a sore loser but first impressions do matter. Having grown up with Yahtzee, I think my wife and I appreciate the added elements to this game more than our kids do.
Frog Juice
I didn’t even know we owned Frog Juice until I dug through our pile of games. None of us has any recollection of every playing it. I’m glad we uncovered this one. The Gamewright note claims they had more fun creating this game than any other, and it certainly is entertaining as you trade in cards to claim ingredients and build spells.
Each turn you refill your hand and take one action. That action can be claiming ingredients, either by directly matching a face-up card in the middle or adding two ingredient cards together to equal a third. The other action you can take is to play a power card. The Black Cat lets you steal someone else’s claimed power card. The Witch lets you “sweep” up (i.e. collect) all the face-up cards in the middle, unless someone counters with a Witch Wash card in which case they steal all the cards and your Witch. The rest of the power cards are Spells. Each spell requires you to collect specific ingredients. You can collect the ingredients for a Spell from your hand, or the face-up cards, or from any player. You keep an unfinished Spell in front of you until you complete it, repeating the collection process for free each turn. To end your turn you discard a card face up to the middle. Once the draw pile runs out you keep playing until no one can play any more cards. Whoever finishes with the most ingredients gets two points and everyone gets a point per power card. The winner is the player with the most points. Whew!
The focus of the game is on math. Gamewright even notes that you’re basically playing a math drill. The rules sound complicated but it plays very smoothly after the first few rounds. Besides the power cards, you’re just looking for pairs of cards to add together to equal a third card. The power cards add enough variety to the mix to keep things more interesting than a game like DOS, which is essentially the same number matching mechanic without anything special.
The theme fits very well. It’s centered around the Spell cards. Each Spell card includes a small recipe, such as “Blend Frog Juice & Shrinking Brew; Add 1 Prince.” There’s also an official sounding spell name along with some flavor text. My son did ask about the red candle wax on the skull, which he thought was blood, so if you have senstive children the skull might freak them out a bit. Also, if you have any issues with witchcraft, stay far away.
The component is a deck of standard cards. The ingredient cards are numbered 1 through 12 and each number is a different illustration, so each 2 is Bats and each 5 is Mice. Don’t worry, there’s no spiders or snakes or other scary ingredients. The witches are pretty tame, looking a bit like something from The Little Prince. The Spell cards look very cool but do contain a bunch of words, and since the ingredients are capitalized on the Spell cards but not on the ingredient cards it could be difficult for some younger kids to match the ingredients to the spells. But that’s why it’s rated ages 8+.
My son’s ranking: 6 out of 21. This one has quickly become a family go-to game since I pulled it out of irrelevance. Even our five year old daughter sits down to play with help. Everyone really enjoys the spells, but if someone else uses the Witch Wash to counter my son’s Witch card he gets super upset.
Jump Ship!
Jump Ship! is a game in Gamewright’s Cardventure line, which is a neat idea to try and translate Choose Your Own Adventure to cards. It appears there were supposed to be four different Cardventure games but it looks like only this one and Stowaway 52 were actually released. That’s probably because it’s just cheaper to produce a book or an app that can do exactly what this card game does. You have numbered cards in different colors. You start by drawing a random black card. You read the bit of story on the card, then choose one of the two options at the bottom. Each option gives you a color and number indicating which card to pick up next. Some of the cards have gold symbols indicating points. If you reach the Mermaid Beach card then your story ends and determine your rank based on how many gold pieces you acquired. Apparently you’re supposed to replay to get a higher score, but really the points are meaningless. And the story is pretty lackluster. I can see why this series of card games didn’t catch on.
The focus of this game is reading and making binary decisions. It is nice to work so much reading into a game, but at the same time we already have more than enough books to read. A game should be about playing, not reading.
The theme is pirates. You spend the game hopping between different ships since each color represents a ship. But every card looks the same so it’s hard to get into the battles and other events happening on each card. Especially for kids, prose just doesn’t convey as much as images. Having to read each card really slows the pace. And eventually, if you actually played this game enough times, you’d just have each card’s text memorized. It’s like a whole game based around flavor text.
The components are the deck of cards. They are oversized to fit the story text and choices. The only illustrations are a boat border on each card. Oh, and the various events that can come up in the Open Waters deck, but those come up so rarely we never even saw one. The box contains an inner compartment that slides out, which means a little less wear on the cards when you put them away, so that’s nice.
My son’s ranking: 5 out of 21. This was another surprise to me, but then I watched him play. His explanation for this ranking was that he likes it because he can play it by himself. He didn’t have the aesthetic complaints I had with the game. And he loved seeing how many cards he could play to make the longest story.
Ka-Ching!
Ka-Ching! is a very loose stock market simulation. It’s only two player, which is a bummer for a family game. You start with $20. The “stocks” are represented by cards of four colors and numbers two through six. You lay out the stocks in six columns. You can see all the stocks but only the one at the bottom of each column is available to buy. Each turn you either buy one of the six available stocks or trade in stocks you own for cash. A stock costs whatever number is on it. When you trade in stocks, you take two cards of the same color and multiply their numbers to calculate how much cash you get. Once you get down to two columns of stocks the game is over and whoever has the most cash wins.
The focus of this game is basic math and a simplified version of how buying and selling stocks works. It’s good for teaching subtraction since you have to constantly make change using the available denominations of bills. It’s good for teaching multiplication from 2×2 up through 6×5. What it’s not very good at is actually providing good guidance on investing. There’s no way to lose cash. Once you buy a stock, it’s going to provide a positive return on your investment (or at worst break even with a 2×2 trade) unless you run out of turns to cash it in. So, it’s kind of a bad game for instilling financial literacy. But that’s the adult in me talking. My son enjoyed it because it’s so focused on math.
The theme is the stock market. Each color of card is supposed to be a different industry, but that aspect is pretty forgettable. We never once said “I’ll buy the 5 technology” instead of “I’ll buy the blue 5.” The wheeling and dealing is fun as you weigh the risk of buying a stock to uncover a higher one that your opponent could buy before your next turn.
The components are two decks of standard cards. One deck is the stocks and one deck is the cash. The stocks are simple colors and numbers with some illustrations to add a flavor of industries. The cash cards are cartoon versions of their actual bills, including $2 bills. The cash cards are different colors, rather than all green. That helps to quickly differentiate the bills but ultimately you have to know the number on each card anyway. The only major complaint is the game needs more cash cards as we routinely run out when we start cashing in our stocks.
My son’s ranking: 4 out of 21. Wow did this game take hold of him. His explanation is that he likes the cards because “they have different colors and the cards have different numbers.” I think he also likes learning simple multiplication and the tension of revealing a card your opponent wants.
The Legend of Landlock
The Legend of Landlock is sort of like a beginner version of the classic Carcassonne. But now there’s My First Carcassonne. And this game is only two player. So I’m not sure why you’d play this game unless you really like the gnomes. Each turn you draw a tile and have to play it so the land and water matches an existing tile. There’s an arbitrary limit on how many rows and columns you can lay down tiles, which isn’t really necessary considering some of the scoring rules that already encourage placing tiles in tight 2×2 configurations. And honestly, we’ve once played the game by its rules. We just worked together to build the 6×6 grid of tiles using the land and water matching stipulation.
The focus of this game is matching the land and water on each tile. You’re also trying to form islands or ponds based on which side you’re playing. You can also make a continuous path or river that touches multiple sides of the grid, which is one reason for the strict 6×6 grid rule. There’s scoring based on gnomes facing each other. And there’s something about animals showing up.
The theme is vaguely fairy tale or naturalistic. It is very gentle since it’s just dirt paths, water, grass, and some gnomes. Even the one tile that has a dragon on it is tame. But it’s also entirely forgettable and generic.
The components are a set of square thick cardboard tiles. The artwork is passable at best. I wish the box held the pieces better since they’re always jumbled when we open it.
My son’s ranking: 18 out of 21. I’m honestly surprised this one landed this high.
Sleeping Queens
Sleeping Queens is somewhat similar to Frog Juice, which I previously covered. I remember my wife and I used to play Sleeping Queens years ago. I recall enjoying it very much and thinking it was one of the better Gamewright games since it offers some actual choices and strategy. We cracked it open with our seven year old son and it’s lost some of its luster for me.
There are twelve Queens that all start face down. Each turn you can play one of four Power cards. Playing a King wakes up a Queen, which means you turn one face up and put it in front of you. Playing a Sleeping Potion puts an opponent’s Queen back to sleep. Playing a Knight steals an opponent’s Queen to your own collection. Playing a Jester reveals the top card of the draw pile, and if it’s a Power card you keep it, otherwise you count the number on the card around the players and whoever it stops on gets to wake up a Queen. If you don’t have any Power cards to play, you can also trade in number cards, much like Frog Juice, where you can trade in a single card, a pair, or an addition equation (e.g. 2, 3, 4, and 9 since 2+3+4=9). Whoever gets five Queens or 50 points worth of Queen’s (each one is valued at 5, 10, 15, or 20) wins.
The game offers two counter cards. The Dragon counters an opponent playing a Knight on you. The Magic Wand stops an opponent playing a Sleeping Potion on you. This feels like the Witch Wash from Frog Juice or even the Same Number Steal from Zeus on the Loose. I wonder if the same designer at Gamewright worked on all these games.
The focus of the game is numbers and memorization. You win by having the highest point total across your queen cards. As you play, the queens are flipped face up and face down so you’ll need to remember where the higher points are laid out. You need to know some basic math to trade in number cards since you can trade in cards that add up to the same (e.g. 4 and 5 along with a 9 since 4 + 5 = 9).
The theme is a humorous take on fairy tales. Each queen is unique in a funny way, such as wearing a dress containing pancakes. The kings are just as goofy, such as a Tied Dye King. There are very generic knights and dragons and potions and wands.
The component is a deck of standard cards. There are queens that get laid out while you draw the rest of the cards. I appreciate that the backs of the queen cards are a different color, which makes keeping the two decks separate easier since they tend to get a bit jumbled at the end of each round. The artwork for the queens and kings is catchy.
My son’s ranking: 7 out of 21. Like Frog Juice, this one is now in regular rotation after years of dormancy. The number cards works almost the same in each, so it’s no surprise to see Sleeping Queens ranked similarly to Frog Juice. I think the spells in Frog Juice nudge it forward.
Sushi Go Party
Sushi Go Party is a fantastic card drafting game. Each player starts with a small deck of cards pulled randomly from the full set. Each turn you pick a card to keep from your current deck then pass the deck to the next player. Once all the decks are depleted you score the round. Shuffle all the cards together, make new decks, and play another round. Whoever has the most points after three rounds win. It’s simple to play but the mix of ingredients and how each one uniquely scores provides near limitless replayability. Each player will have different strategies but each round will be different since the mix of cards will change each time so you’re never guaranteed of any single strategy. You can try to collect all the dumplings and score more points, but someone else might be drafting them as well. Or you might take tofu too early and wind up scoring no points when no one else takes the remaining one. You can risk playing for the dessert bonus at the end of the game but you could be thwarted and waste your turns but then you made someone else use a turn. I love playing this game.
Sushi Go Party is the expanded version of the original Sushi Go. This version adds more ingredients and a variable menu that determines which cards you play with each game. That adds even more to the mix so you could play it differently every time. We haven’t played with all the ingredients yet, since some of them are more complicated and we like the nice casual play so far.
The focus of this game is card drafting and figuring out what the optimal card to take each turn is while advancing your overall collection each round. It’s largely based on matching identical cards. Usually the more of a specific card you have the more points you’ll get. Our five year old daughter doesn’t fully grasp all the scoring mechanisms but still has fun picking cards and flipping them over. Granted she usually wanders off before the third round.
The theme is all kinds of sushi and related food. There are different categories, from appetizers to rolls to desserts. All the food has funny faces which gives the game a nice light-hearted feel. It would be much different if it was pictures of actual food. I suppose you could graft this game onto other types of food, like Italian, but sushi feels like the perfect a la carte fit.
The components are very nice. There’s the standard cards with various food pictures. They all have the same back so they can be mixed together into a single deck and then into the smaller decks. There’s a small small board to display the current game’s ingredients, with each ingredient being a cardboard tile that slides into a slot. Each slot is identified as a type, such as appetizer or dessert. There’s also a scoring track around the border of the board and some scoring tokens. It all comes in a nice metal case. I just wish the dividers for the cards kept the cards in place better. They also divide the cards by type, which is fine, but we tend to stick with the same menu for a while and there’s not really a good way to store a complete deck.
My son’s ranking: 11 out of 21. I was disappointed to see this one so low since it’s in my top three if not my number one. I’m not sure why he ranked it so low.
There’s a Moose in the House
There’s a Moose in the House is simple to play. Each turn you can either play an empty room in front of an opponent or put a moose in an existing empty room of the same color. There’s a Door card that prevents anyone from putting a moose on one of the rooms in front of you. There’s a Moose Trap card that counters someone playing a moose to one of your rooms. When the draw deck runs out and no one can make any legal plays, you count how many moose are in front of you and left in your hand. The player with the least amount of points is the winner. That’s pretty much it. It plays super quick and offers some mindless entertainment for quick bursts.
My wife and I played this game a ton before we even had kids. We would take it with us to restaurants and play while we waited for food. The biggest complaint is the requirement to first put a Moose in the House card on a player before you can put any empty rooms in front of them. This really slows down the beginning of the game and can totally screw a player who gets unlucky. It’s just like Parcheesi or Trouble where you have to roll a specific number to start moving a piece. I wish they hadn’t even included this rule, and it’s easy enough to take out if you want.
The focus of this game is color matching. You can play whatever empty room you want on an opponent but then you have to match the same color moose to that room. The only wild cards in the game are the Moose Trap and Door. The Door is easier to explain while the Moose Trap requires reacting to another player’s turn. And of course there’s some counting at the end to determine the points for a winner.
The theme, much like Rat-a-Tat Cat, is goofy and fitting but isn’t totally tied into the game itself. It is amusing to look a the pictures of the moose in the various rooms, but there are only four rooms and thus only four moose. Be prepared for a “moose butt” in your kitchen.
The component is a deck of standard playing cards. They have stood up to years of us playing this game and carrying it around with us to restaurants. That’s impressive considering how often the cards get tossed around, stacked, and shuffled. The artwork is mostly realistic but with a slightly (purposeful) amateur Photoshop feel, which makes the images of a moose in the house that much more amusing.
My son’s ranking: 13 out of 21. Yeah, I can’t really fault him. This game is more nostalgic for my wife and me to recall our dating days.
Three of a Crime
For years I hated Three of a Crime. It seemed like too much work and it requires at least three players which meant my wife and I couldn’t play it until our kids were older. But then I broke it out with my son and actually discovered a very clever, simple deduction game.
One player is the eyewitness. That player takes a random card. Then the other players take turns flipping over the top card from the draw pile. The eyewitness determines how many of the characters on each card match the characters on the eyewitness’ card, and places a number token next to the card. The other players must use that information to deduce which three characters are on the eyewitness’ card. It feels a bit like Mastermind, but way simpler since there’s only three criminals and order doesn’t matter. And turns out there is are a couple official two player variants that are actually enjoyable.
The focus of this game is pure logic and deduction. It can melt your brain a bit to piece together the clues and figure out the three criminals. The two player variant even places a six card limit on the guessing player, which really puts the pressure to fully utilize the clues. I’ve wandered down many wrong paths, and almost got in a fight with my son because I thought he gave a bad clue when it turned out my logic was flawed.
The theme is a police lineup of distinctive criminals. Each criminal is a different color, so while they have names we always just referred to them by color. Oddly there’s only one female character, and I believe they are all white. But if anything, a game about criminals that doesn’t include minorities is somewhat refreshing. And most players will be focused on the game assigned color of each criminal rather than the skin color anyway.
The component is a deck of thick cardboard cards. There aren’t very many cards. I assume there’s a single card with each combination of three unique criminals, but it doesn’t even feel like that many cards. I love how the cards feel, though. They are just heavy enough to have some weight and they will definitely standup to wear and tear, although oddly cards don’t get used as often in this game since no one has a hand to hold. The number tokens are bare bones but serviceable, although I could see easily losing them.
My son’s ranking: 14 out of 21. I thought this might be higher based on our handful of plays, but maybe the passive nature of the eyewitness didn’t enthrall him.
Zeus on the Loose
Zeus on the Loose is one of the games I included in my article about educational games. It’s a quick math game as you try to be in possession of the Zeus figurine when the discard pile reaches 100. Each turn you discard one card. If it’s a number card, you add the number to the current total of the discard pile. If it’s a god card, you follow the directions on the card, such as “Make the discard pile equal 50. Steal Zeus.” If you make the pile equal a multiple of 10 then you acquire the Zeus figurine. When the pile reaches 100 or more, whoever has the Zeus figurine wins the round. It plays lightning fast and the tension ebbs and flows nicely as the pile reaches 100 only to be brought back down by a god card.
The only rule I dislike is the “Same Number Sneak” rule since it can cause multiple players to all try and slam down a card and steal Zeus. There’s plenty of other ways to steal Zeus without causing the arguments over who played a card faster. None of us even remember the rule while we’re playing, so we’ve effectively eliminated it from our family’s rules.
The focus of this game is math. It’s mostly addition as you add 1 to 9 to the existing total. There’s a god card that requires rounding up or down, which offers a good lesson in rounding. There’s a god card the reverses the digits of the total. There’s a god card the subtracts 10 from the total. So, you’re doing a lot of adding in this game.
The theme is the major Greek gods: Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Hera, Hermes, and Poseidon. The number cards have a nice font that feels Greek and matches the god names. The theme isn’t hugely important to gameplay yet it all feels of a piece.
The component is a deck of standard cards and a plastic Zeus figurine. The cards are the usual high quality Gamewright. The figurine is pretty cool and offers a nice tactile objective to shoot for since the gameplay is so relatively abstract otherwise. The gods are depicted in caricature form, with big heads and a symbol of his or her power.
My son’s ranking: 2 out of 21. No surprise here. He loves the simple math and enjoys the Greek god theme. Also, he says he “likes all the ways you can steal Zeus.”
Forbidden Series
Finally, I’ll briefly go over a series of cooperative games. All of these are designed by Matt Leacock, the designer of Pandemic. So the fact that many people compare and contrast Pandemic to Forbidden Island makes sense but not in a negative way. All three of these games are rated ages 10+. Given the added complexity of each, I’m not going to give as much of a rules overview as the previous games in this article.
Forbidden Island
First in the series is Forbidden Island, one of the games I included in my article about educational games. Yes, this one feels the most like Pandemic but it’s a totally different theme and plays much quicker. It’s less intense for younger children and for those who don’t feel like combatting diseases with a real world pandemic in full swing. The basic premise is the players are on an island that is sinking. You have to collect the four artifacts from various spots on the playing field then gather at the helicopter to escape before the island sinks too much. You collect each artifact by trading in cards, much like you cure a disease in Pandemic. But the artifacts themselves are way more impressive than the tokens used for cures.
The focus of this game is teamwork and collection. Each player has a different character with a different unique power. So it helps to talk things through and work out a solution that maximizes each player’s turn. Like all cooperative games, it runs the risk of “quarterbacking”, where an alpha player takes over and dictates to everyone else, but it can also be used as a learning experience to get more timid players to speak up.
The theme works very well to create the right level of tension. Each tile is a different location and hints at a larger setting. You flip over tiles to indicate when they are flooded and remove them from the playing field if they totally sink, which creates a great visual effect of how bad things are going. By the end tiles will likely be flying off the board as you scramble to complete the final objectives. The artifacts are somewhat abstract and I can’t recall the reason given for the players needing to gather them before they can escape, but just treat them as the Macguffin and enjoy the game.
The components are fantastic. The tiles are sturdy and feature beautiful artwork. The artifact tokens are excellent and provide a very tactile feel to accomplishing your objectives. The water marker slider does a good job indicating the relative level of tension. The cards and tokens are fine but didn’t need to be anything special. And it all comes in a nice metal case, although that means it won’t stack or line up as well with other games, not even the others in the same Forbidden series.
My son’s ranking: 8 out of 21. He enjoys this one way more than Pandemic. I think that’s largely the difference in theme. I imagine flipping the tiles is more tactile and entertaining than putting little cubes on a board.
Forbidden Desert
Second in the series is Forbidden Desert. The complexity and difficulty are ramped up from Forbidden Island. It feels a lot more stressful, especially with the addition of tracking water per player. That means we don’t play this one nearly as much. It also means actually winning feels like a bigger accomplishment.
The main gameplay gimmick is the sandstorm that moves around the board. The storm is represented by a blank space (the center of the grid in the promo picture above). As the storm moves you shift tiles to move the blank space. That’s actually a neat use of negative space that I don’t recall seeing in other games (closest I can think of is the tile you take off the board in Labyrinth). You also need to uncover two tiles that provide the row and column of each artifact, which is another neat mechanic that also teaches the basics of the Cartesian coordinate system.
The focus of the game is teamwork, again. This time it’s even more important than Forbidden Island since you are forced to be more spread apart to fight all the sand being placed on the tiles and uncover the location of each artifact. There’s limited resources with the water needed to keep player alive, which can unfortunately become way too much of a focus over gathering the artifacts.
The theme is surviving a sandstorm in the desert. It feels more intense than the sinking island of Forbidden Island, partially due to the higher degree of difficulty. Stacking the sand on tiles really makes you feel the odds rising against you. The artwork isn’t as good as Forbidden Island, and with the sand tokens you don’t get to see it as much. The flying machine you are assembling is neat and fits the steampunk aesthetic design.
The components are just as high quality as Forbidden Island, although I prefer the artifacts in Island over Desert. I’m also never entirely sure how the pieces fit together to form the flying machine. There’s a lot more fiddling with the components as you shift tiles, lay down sand, take off sand, and track artifact locations. Flipping the tiles in Forbidden Island was a nice simple action and indicator while stacking sand on tiles and then moving those tiles can be far less easy to maintain. Each player has to track an individual water level and those sliders don’t stay on the card very well which creates a hassle. All this adds up to why we prefer pulling out Forbidden Island instead.
My son’s ranking: N/A. He’s asked to play but I have not brought it out with him.
Forbidden Storm
The third game is Forbidden Storm. We’ve owned this game for almost two years (it came out in 2018) and it’s still in its original shrinkwrap. That was partially due to having two kids by 2018, which meant less time for new games. Now, with all of us playing games, we just haven’t reached this one in the stack of games. I’m also a little worried it won’t live up to Forbidden Island or even Forbidden Desert. But I can’t really speak to this one, but wanted to let you know it’s around.
My son’s ranking: N/A. We haven’t played this one at all… yet.
Conclusion
There you have it. Gamewright has published almost 200 games since 1994. They provide great entertainment for the whole family, running through all sorts of game mechanics and themes. There’s bound to be some that interest you and your family. Hopefully my brief reviews of these 25 games can help guide you to discover some new family favorites from Gamewright and establish your own family tradition of gaming together.
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