Game Night: Cooperative Edition

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I’ve already shared our favorite card games that we play for a game night:

Now I want to share our favorite cooperative games. I like to call these games “non-competitive” because you’re not trying to crush your friends and family. All of the players are working together as a team to beat the game. My fella and I have a lot of fun with these because no one ends up mad at the other for winning (yeah, we’re a bunch of sore losers over here!). Instead, we have fun working out a strategy to win together. Also, these games get pretty intense when you know it will be game-over in few turns and you’re trying to get everything you need to win. If you haven’t played this kind of a game before, you really should give it a try.

Game Night: Cooperative Edition

Forbidden Island

So, the story of Forbidden Island is that your whole team is on a mysterious island trying to find four sacred treasures before the island floods and you all die/lose the game. Each player has a special ability that they can use on their turn. You all work together to move around the board, keep areas of the island from flooding, collect the treasures, and make it to the helicopter to escape before the island floods completely. This game is awesome because it never plays the same twice. The board is made up of tiles that end up in different locations every time you play. Also, the player abilities are handed out randomly which keeps things new. And you can start the game on varying levels of difficulty. We have so much fun playing this one and things honestly get all suspenseful at the end when you’re trying to get everything before the island floods! I also have to say that the game is super well-made. The artwork on the cards is so pretty and everything is quite durable and comes in a nice tin case instead of a cardboard box. I just don’t recommend playing it on the floor if your dog needs to be the center of attention!

Forbidden Desert

Forbidden Desert is made by the same company as Forbidden Island, but they are definitely different enough to own both (we do!). In Forbidden Desert, your team is searching the desert for the pieces of a legendary flying machine. However, you’re in the middle of a sandstorm that keeps covering things up while you’re trying to uncover them. Also, the sandstorm keeps moving thing around, a.k.a. making the board tiles rotate. So you might be close the the tile you need and then things rotate and it’s on the other side of the board now. You’re racing against the sandstorm (because tiles get buried deeper and deeper), and the heat of the desert (because if you run out of your water supply the game is over). Forbidden Desert is more complex than Forbidden Island and has a few more things going on. It’s fun to work out a strategy together so that everyone stays alive (if one player runs out of water, everyone loses), gets all of the pieces to the flying machine, and makes it out of the desert.

These two games are the only cooperative games that I have played, but I know there must be others. We love both of them! They are just as fun with two players as they are with four or five, which is awesome because most of the time it’s just the two of us, but if we have family over we can all play.