Forbidden Island for Game of the Year

If you saw our article last week about winning new games from Gamewright Games, then you would have also seen our mention about how much we enjoy Forbidden Island – one of their new family board games in 2010.

Well, some great news came out this past week about Forbidden Island. Forbidden Island is one of 3 finalist for the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) this year.

For those that might not know, the Spiel des Jahres is one of the most coveted worldwide gaming awards, sometimes referred to as the Oscars© of the industry. Forbidden Island is the first Gamewright game ever to receive such a nomination – and we think that’s pretty cool.

The games considered for the award are family-style games. Here’s the criteria on which a game will be evaluated:

1. game concept (originality, playability, game value)
2. rule structure (composition, clearness, comprehensibility)
3. layout (box, board, rules),
4. design (functionality, workmanship)

Forbidden Island has already won a handful of prestigious awards since it’s release in 2010, including, Mensa Select, FamilyFun Magazine Game of the Year and MTV Geek’s Top Board Game of 2010.

The other 2 games nominated this year are Asara and Qwirkle. While we haven’t played Asara, we have played and done a video review of Qwirkle and think it’s a great family game too. But between the two, Forbidden Island gets our vote as the best.

You can see the list of Spiel des Jahres winners from years past here on BoardGameGeek.

And we hope to be talking about Forbidden Island again when the Spiel des Jahres winners are announced on June 27, 2011.

Until then, if you haven’t yet seen the game, then check out our video and written review of Forbidden Island.