Island Escape

Full rules

1. Overview
2. The cards
3. Setup
4. The tiles
5. Playing a turn
6. End of the game
7. Worked example
8. Difficulty
9. Solo game
10. Tips for beginners
11. Variants

Overview

Island Escape is a cooperative adventure game: all players form one team and win or lose together. The island is a square of 5 × 5 cards. Four treasures lie hidden on it, one for each suit, and a helicopter waits in the middle. Your team explores the island, collects the salvage needed to lift the treasures, raises all four and flies off together. But the sea rises: after every turn parts of the island are flooded, and a flooded part that floods again sinks for ever. The water rises faster and faster.

• Players: 1–4; best with 2 or 3.
• You need: one standard 52-card deck, one joker, and a coin (or other small pawn) for each player – all different.

Island Escape is our own adaptation for an ordinary deck, inspired by Forbidden Island (Matt Leacock, Gamewright, 2010). It is a new game written for this site and has not been playtested yet – if the island feels too kind or too cruel, change the difficulty (see "Difficulty").

The cards

The Jacks, Queens and 5♦ aren't needed. An Ace counts as 1.

Setup

1. Build the island. Shuffle the 4 Kings and the 20 land cards and lay them face down in a square of 5 rows and 5 columns. Leave the centre place free and put the joker face up there. Every card on the island is called a tile.
2. Put everyone's pawn on the helicopter (the joker).
3. Shuffle the five column cards into a face-down pile, and the five row cards into another.
4. Water gauge: stack its cards face up in this order, so that the lowest is on top: 5♣ at the bottom, then 4♦, 4♣, 3♦, 3♣, 2♦, 2♣, A♦ and A♣ on top. The rank of the top card is the water level: at the start it is 1.
5. The youngest player begins; play goes clockwise (to the left).

Columns are counted from the left (1–5), rows from the top (1–5), as seen by the player who laid out the island. Everyone should agree which edge is the "top".

The tiles

A tile can be in one of four states:

• Face down: unexplored land. Nobody knows what it is.
• Face up, upright: explored, dry land.
• Crosswise: flooded. You can still stand on it, but one more flood and it sinks.
• Gone: sunk (or salvaged) – that place is now sea. Nobody can walk there.

Playing a turn

On your turn you have 4 actions. You may choose the same action several times, or pass unused actions. Then comes the flood.

Actions

• Move: move your pawn one step – up, down, left or right (never diagonally) – onto a tile that isn't sea. If the tile is face down, turn it face up: you have explored it.
• Swim (costs 2 actions): move your pawn two steps in a straight line – up, down, left or right – across exactly one sea place onto a tile. If that tile is face down, turn it face up.
• Shore up: turn a flooded tile – the one you stand on, or one next to you (up, down, left, right) – upright again. It is dry land once more.
• Salvage: take an explored land tile (6–10) that is next to you (up, down, left, right) and has no pawn on it, and put it face up in front of you. That place is now sea. Kings and the helicopter can never be salvaged.
• Give: give any number of your salvaged cards to a player whose pawn stands on the same tile as yours.
• Raise a treasure: stand on a King and discard salvaged cards of the King's suit – 2 cards in a normal game. Tuck them under the King so that they stick out: this treasure is raised. (If a suit runs short, see "End of the game".)
• Take off: when all four treasures are raised and all pawns stand on the helicopter, spend one action to fly away – you win.

Salvaged cards lie face up in front of you. You may talk about everything – it's a team game.

The flood

After your actions, the island floods as many times as the water level (the rank of the top gauge card). This number is fixed at the start of the flood phase: if the water rises in the middle of it, the higher level only counts from the next turn. For each flood:

1. Turn up the top column card and the top row card and lay them on two face-up discard piles. Together they point to one place: the column card's rank is the column, the row card's rank the row.
2. What happens there: - Dry tile (face up or face down): it floods. Turn a face-down tile face up, then turn the tile crosswise. - Flooded tile: it sinks. Take it off the table (see "Sinking"). - Sea: nothing happens.

Example: You turn up the 4♠ and the 2♥: column 4, row 2 – the fourth tile from the left in the second row from the top.

The water rises

The column and row piles always run out together, after five floods. When they do, shuffle each pile separately again and raise the water: take the top card off the gauge and put it in the box. The new top card is the new water level (when A♣ is removed, A♦ still shows level 1; when A♦ goes, 2♣ shows level 2). If the flood phase still has floods left, continue with the fresh piles.

Over the five floods of one pass through the piles, every column and every row is hit exactly once – but in a new combination each time.

Sinking

When a tile sinks:

• A land tile goes back in the box.
• A King whose treasure has been raised is simply put aside with its cards – the treasure is safe.
• A King whose treasure has not been raised yet: the treasure is lost – you lose.
• The helicopter: you lose.
• A pawn on the sinking tile swims at once, for free, to a tile next to it – including diagonally. If that tile is face down, turn it face up. If there is no tile anywhere around it, that player drowns – you lose.

End of the game

You win by taking off (see "Actions").

Short of a suit. The island holds only five land cards of each suit, and floods can sink them. If too few cards of a King's suit are left – on the island and in your salvage together – to raise its treasure, you may raise it with one card more than usual, of any suits (in a normal game: any three salvaged cards).

You lose if:

• an unraised treasure's King sinks, or the helicopter sinks;
• a pawn can't swim to safety;
• no pawn can reach an unraised King or the helicopter any more, even by swimming – that place is cut off;
• a treasure can't be raised even with the "short of a suit" rule, because too few land cards are left at all;
• the water has to rise while the gauge shows its last card (5♣) – the island is swallowed by the sea.

Worked example

Normal game, two players. Anna and Ben stand on the helicopter (column 3, row 3). The water level is 1.

Anna's turn. She moves up to column 3, row 2 and turns it face up: 8♥. She moves up again to row 1: K♣ – the club treasure site! She moves left to column 2, row 1 (7♣) and down to column 2, row 2 (10♣). Flood (level 1, so one flood): 3♠ and A♥ – column 3, row 1: the K♣ is flooded and turned crosswise. One more flood there and the club treasure is lost.

Ben's turn. He moves up to the 8♥ and on to the K♣ and shores it up – the K♣ is upright again. With his fourth action he moves right to column 4, row 1: 7♠. Flood: 2♠ and 4♥ – column 2, row 4 is still face down. It is turned face up (9♦) and laid crosswise.

Anna's turn. She salvages the 7♣ above her – column 2, row 1 is sea now, and Anna holds her first club. She moves right onto the 8♥ and salvages the 10♣ she has just left (column 2, row 2 becomes sea). Fourth action: she moves up onto the K♣. Flood: 5♠ and 5♥ – the bottom right corner is flooded (it turns out to be 6♠).

Ben's turn. He moves down to column 4, row 2 (6♦), right to column 5, row 2 (10♥) and down to column 5, row 3: K♥, the heart treasure site. Fourth action: he salvages the 10♥ above him, an edge tile. Flood: A♠ and 3♥ – column 1, row 3 is flooded (9♠).

Anna's turn. She raises the club treasure: she tucks 7♣ and 10♣ under the King. Then she walks back down past the 8♥ to the helicopter and on to column 3, row 4 (7♥). Flood: 4♠ and 2♥ – the 6♦ at column 4, row 2 is flooded. That was the fifth flood, so both piles are empty: they are shuffled again and A♣ comes off the gauge. The A♦ now shows – still level 1, but after five more floods the water reaches level 2.

Difficulty

The budget. The gauge is the clock. With the full gauge the island can take 45 floods: that is 22 turns – whatever the number of players, since there is a flood phase after every turn – so the team has 88 actions in all, and you must take off by the 22nd turn. Our rough count of what a Normal win needs: about 25 moves to explore and walk (floods turn up tiles for you, too), 8 salvages, 4 raises, around 10 shore-ups (over 45 floods every place is hit almost twice on average) and a few steps home plus the take-off – some 50–55 actions, a few more with three or four pawns to bring home. The remaining 30 or so are your reserve for detours, swimming and bad luck. The game hasn't been playtested: if you win easily, play Hard; if the island keeps winning, play Easy.

Solo game

Play with two pawns and take turns for them alternately – each pawn has its own salvaged cards, and there is a flood after each pawn's turn, as usual.

Tips for beginners

• Spread out. Two pawns exploring in different directions find the Kings far faster.
• Guard the Kings. Once you know where a King is, don't let it stay flooded – a second hit ends the game.
• Salvage wisely. Every salvaged tile is one less place to stand. Salvage from the edge of the island, not the paths you need to get home.
• Keep an eye on the gauge. From level 2 on, several floods come each turn – head for the helicopter in good time.
• The helicopter matters too. If it is flooded, shore it up at once.

Variants

All optional – agree before you start.

• Divers (easier): swimming costs only 1 action.
• Short game: each treasure needs 1 card, but the gauge starts without A♣ (17 turns, 68 actions).