A cooperative mission you can talk through
Gamewright’s original Forbidden Island, stock number 317, offers a shared treasure-and-escape mission for two to four players. Its rules explicitly encourage teammates to advise during a player’s turn. Choose it when discussing the plan is welcome; this is not a game whose central challenge is keeping each player’s intentions silent.
The board can disappear under the plan
The base game has 24 island tiles. Flooding first threatens a place, and a repeated flood draw can remove a flooded tile. Missing spaces then change how the group can move. That makes the shared problem different from simply optimising a route over a board that stays intact.
Shoring up a tile can compete with moving or pursuing treasure among a turn’s three actions. The interest lies in deciding together what must survive long enough, not in assuming the biggest immediate gain is always the best shared action. A location you postpone saving may no longer be available when the group returns.
Four treasures are necessary, not sufficient
The rules require everyone to reach Fools’ Landing after the treasures have been collected, then use a Helicopter Lift card to depart. Losing Fools’ Landing is itself a defeat condition. The escape is therefore not an automatic cutscene awarded after the fourth treasure. It is part of what the group must preserve.
That provides a concrete reason to enjoy the game: a shared plan must include the return, not just the objects being sought. Someone who likes protecting a future option while making immediate progress has more to consider than a tally of treasures.
Choose the kind of cooperation the evening wants
The designer Matt Leacock describes the same four-treasure escape premise. The original box is enough to begin that mission; separately linked digital versions and alternate layouts are not assumed contents.
Consider Forbidden Island when the group wants to advise, watch the shared map shrink and keep a route home together. If everyone wants an independent winner, or dislikes having a common plan overturned by the island, the cooperative theme alone will not settle the fit. The clear attraction is that success means getting everyone out, not merely being the person who found the most.
Sources & further reading
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