For the competitive analysis critical play, I played Forbidden Island. Forbidden Island is a game that requires 2-4 players (though it is better with more people). It was made by Matt Leacock and published by Gamewright Games. The target audience is people who like lots of strategy and helping their friends. Forbidden island offers fellowship(helping your friends so you can all leave the sinking island), fantasy(you are pretending you are on a sinking island with 1 of 6 roles, more on those later), and challenge(what do you do with your turns).
The main difference between our game, Summit Rush, and Forbidden Island is in Forbidden Island you help the other players, but in Summit Rush you hinder the other players, this difference is because of the differences in our cards. Forbidden Island has treasure cards and special action cards. The treasure cards are needed to get the different treasures. The action cards can help you get those treasure cards, or help you not lose. The game really revolves around getting these treasure cards and treasures, as the win condition is to get all four.
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(this is a screenshot of our hands. You can see we have 3 of the 4 treasures, and we have the different treasure cards in our hand, as well as the special cards (sandbags and helicopter))
In Summit Rush, not only can you not see your opponent’s hand, but the cards are much different. Our win condition is to make it to the top of the mountain first, and our cards reflect that. So we have cards like rope(helps climb cliffs or impassable tiles), boots(gives you extra movement), and hand warmers(gives you +5 heat, which is how you can move). As well as cards like trap and freeze so you can prevent the other players from winning.
This can also be seen with the map layouts. In Summit Rush it looks like the side of a mountain. Which causes players to get closer to each other as they progress through the game, which allows more competition.
Whereas the map layout for Forbidden Island changes based on what island you’re on. But it is a lot smaller.
(The white outlined areas show where land cards are supposed to be. We were far into this around so and a lot of them were flooded)
This allows players to be by each other a lot more, as they need to collaborate to make it off the flooding island. Even though the layout is different, both maps are similar by having tiles that move randomly every game. This causes there to be no correct way to play the game, so more skilled players don’t instantly win.
It can also be seen in the roles in Forbidden Island. There are six of them, and some of them can help other players.
(You can see them on the right side of the screen. We had an engineer, pilot, and diver on our team.)
The roles causes the game to be a bit unbalanced, as some roles are better than others. For example, the diver is better than the explorer and the pilot is better than both of them. The other roles of engineer, navigator, and messinger are very unique and cannot be compared to the others.
Another difference is in Forbidden Island, if a land is flooded, you can “shore up” which takes away the flooded attribute. You can shore up as many times as you want a turn, and it is crucial to do so. This is a main gameplay mechanic, as it allows you to prevent your teammates from getting stuck, losing a crucial land tile, or just losing in general as there are not a lot of tiles to begin with. This leads to the dynamic of achievement, as you prevent your team from losing, which then leads to the aesthetic of fellowship. In Summit Rush, the only way to unfreeze a tile is by placing a camp on this. You can only do this if you have a camp card in your hand, and shouldn’t be used lightly, as camp cards are really good, but really rare.
For similarities, both of our games have a deck that gets rid of land tiles. In Forbidden Island it’s called the flood deck, and in Summit Rush it’s called the freeze deck. Both do the same thing, if a card is drawn from it once, that land tile is flooded/frozen. And if it is drawn again, it will become impassible. This causes a sense of urgency to win before all the tiles become impassable. Also, in the other deck there is a gets colder/water rises card. If these are drawn the counter on the thermometer/altimeter, which immediately puts previously drawn tile back into the freeze/flood deck, and if it hits one of the numbers, it causes you to draw more cards from the freeze/flood deck.
(You can see the altimeter on the right side of the screen, it is currently on 4 so we draw four flood cards at the end of our turn)
Some of the problems I noticed while playing Forbidden Island is that my friends and I didn’t have feel like our turns mattered, which caused the game to become frustrating. Early game we would just wait for treasure cards, and late game we were just trying to shore up as much as we could to not drown. This problem is addressed in Summit Rush by having cards that can directly help you win by moving in front, or preventing others from following you. Not only that, but it opens the game up to the joker player type because they can run in front of everyone and grief the map.
