When comparing Freedom - The Underground Railroad vs Forbidden Island, the Slant community recommends Forbidden Island for most people. In the question“What are the best co-op board games?” Forbidden Island is ranked 6th while Freedom - The Underground Railroad is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose Forbidden Island is:
Forbidden Island can be taught within a few minutes to absolutely anyone. It starts off slow and progressively leads into more complicated situations, so there’s time to get into the feel of the game. You only need to know how to do four actions, and the result of them is instantly visible, there’s pretty much nothing to micromanage.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Implements historical education into the gameplay well
The game can be used as a great educational tool and it features plenty of historical moments, locations, and iconic people. Some games can be a bit preachy when they have historical aspects, luckily Freedom finds the right balance, making for a fun game that has plenty of historical components.
Pro Nice aesthetics
The looks of Freedom enhance the gameplay experience a lot. The gameboard is a huge, vintage-looking map of the United States with a newspaper look on the left side where cards and tokens are placed. The event cards feature black and white photos of historical characters, events, and places, as well as some history facts.
Pro Stacks well
Freedom has specific rules and setups for each player count, so it’s going to be a balanced, albeit a little different game for any number of players in the 1 to 4 player amplitude.
Pro Good quality components
The pieces should hold up to multiple plays and they can easily be stored in the game’s box. The components don’t feel cheap. The gameboard itself is huge, quite thick, and foldable, the cubes representing slaves are wooden, all the tokens are made of thick cardboard, and the cards are made of nice and durable cardstock.
Pro The basics are simple
The gameplay gets progressively more difficult as the game progresses, but the basic rules are easy.
The game takes part over 8 rounds, each divided in 5 different phases – slave catcher phase, planning phase, action phase, slave market phase, and lantern phase. The players must move the slaves, raise money to purchase abolition and movement tokens, all while evading slave catchers that move both randomly (by dice roll in the first phase) and in the direction of the slaves if they happen to walk on the path.
To add to this, there are also event cards you can purchase, some of which can help, and others that provide de-buffs. Some cards can be used upon purchase, whereas others provide an effect until removed.
Pro Two difficulties
The “normal mode” of Freedom is already quite hard, but if you’re looking for an extra challenge then you can flip the “slaves lost” card for more difficult requirements – more slaves to free and less room for error.
Pro Abstract components that allow for imagination
The components for the game are somewhat abstract, as there are cubes instead of characters. But this allows for imagination to be used and gives the game a refined look.
Pro Very accessible
Forbidden Island can be taught within a few minutes to absolutely anyone. It starts off slow and progressively leads into more complicated situations, so there’s time to get into the feel of the game. You only need to know how to do four actions, and the result of them is instantly visible, there’s pretty much nothing to micromanage.
Pro Cheap
The game retails for around $15, which is very cheap for the replay value and quality of the components that this game packs.
Pro Great physical components
The components of Forbidden Island are not only visually beautiful, but also durable, so they should hold up to wear and tear just fine. The game comes in a high-quality tin box and is full of thick and sturdy island tiles, durable cardstock cards, and eight treasure figures made of soft plastic.
Pro Beautiful artwork
The game looks amazing, it’s full of colorful high-quality artwork that really enhances the theme of treasure hunting on a mysterious island. The game’s box already gives a great first impression, featuring a big copy of the “Lighthouse” location tile. These locations that form the island have a huge variety of detailed and great-looking art on them.
On a design note, it is also very well done in the sense that it’s easy to distinguish which tiles are sinking, even in the blue-ish looking locations.
Pro Uncomplicated
The rules of Forbidden Island are straightforward. After setting up the map and choosing the difficulty, you are randomly assigned one of the six different classes. During your turn you can take up to three actions in total. All actions cost 1 point, you can move, shore up a drowning tile, give a treasure card to another player on the same tile, or collect a treasure. After that you draw two cards from the treasure card deck and take a number of flood cards equivalent to the water level.
The game is won when you play a “Helicopter lift” card on the “Fool’s Landing” tile while you have all players on it and you’ve uncovered all the treasures. There are many lose conditions – you can lose if the water level reaches the highest mark, if both the tiles housing the same treasure drown before you manage to get it, if the “Fool’s Landing” tile drowns, or if a player drowns.
Pro Varying difficulty
Forbidden Island lets you adjust the difficulty, which is great because you can adjust to the group you’re playing, be it a group of experienced gamers or your family. This is done by moving the slider on the water level meter to one of the four sections. Basically, you start with a higher initial water level.
Pro Good replayability
There are many variables to Forbidden Island that keeps it replayable. The cards you draw and the map you create will always vary and the fact that you get a random class makes the game feel different every time.
The six classes have highly different abilities, for example, the pilot can use an action point to fly to any tile on the island, the messenger can give treasure cards to another player anywhere on the map, and the engineer can shore up two tiles on the same turn for one action point.
Cons
Con Theme may not appeal to everyone
Since the theme is about slavery and escaping through the underground railroad, some people may not want to play as it is a bit on the heavy side. Moreover, it doesn’t really encourage light-hearted socializing between the players.
Con Big gameboard
The map takes up a lot of space, and you need some extra room for the player sheets, so you must either have a big table or spot on the floor. The map is 37.4x18.9 inches (950x480 mm) in size.
Con Quarterbacking issue
A popular issue in cooperative games – the more experienced player might take the reins and tell everyone what the best moves would be. In Freedom nothing is hidden, everyone controls the same units and knows what each other’s special abilities are, so this is particularly prevalent.
Con Quite long
A full game takes roughly 90 minutes, which can be quite difficult to sit through. It’s even more frustrating if you lose at the end. It’s also much too long if you want to, say, use the game as an educational tool in a classroom.
Con Difficult
Freedom is a complex puzzle that can easily drain the players trying to balance movement, money income, purchases, etc. Every action you take can have a lasting effect on the game, and you might not even notice. There’s a limited number of actions you can do before you simply run out of options, so you’ll be trying to figure out what the best move is, while, in fact, none of the moves are good, you’re often looking for the best of the worst.
Con Not very varied
Every game of Freedom can feel kind of alike – the starting scenario is always the same, so the first few turns will usually play out similarly, except for the luck-based elements, such as event cards and slave catcher dice rolls.
Con Quarterbacking / alpha-gamer issue
Forbidden Island suffers from the same issue as many cooperative games – a dominant player might make decisions for everyone. Table talk is absolutely necessary in this game to win, and the fact that everyone’s cards are visible, and the discard pile can be looked through doesn’t help the problem.
Con Many luck elements
Pretty much everything that happens in this game revolves around the cards that are drawn. The map itself is set up by drawing tiles, so you can get very unlucky with the placement of the “Fool’s Landing” tile and the distance to the treasure locations you need to reach in order to win. You can also get unlucky with the treasure card deck that has some “Water Rising” cards shuffled in between – if you draw a few of these in quick succession, you might make important locations sink and lose straightaway.
Con Possibly too light for experienced gamers
The game is very similar to Pandemic, but much easier in the sense that it sacrifices many concepts in favor of accessibility. Due to this Forbidden Island might feel repetitive, simplistic, and not very complex to a more experienced gamer because there are not as many strategic possibilities.