Forbidden Desert has 24 titles arranged in a 5x5 square with a gap in the middle. To find the artifacts, you need to excavate tiles in the desert that point to where the artifacts are (one is horizontal, the other vertical, the place where they meet is where the item is placed) Tiles that don’t point in this direction either provide water, special one-time use items, or warpzones that provide protection from the sun. On the “draw for the enemy turn” In addition to the “things getting worse” mechanic, there is a “Sun beats down” card which forces your character to drink from their water supply, and cards that move the storm around, shifting the arrangement of the board and piling sand up on existing tiles that need to be cleared before tiles can be excavated and blocking movement. Loss conditions are:
- Someone dies of thirst
- Run out of sand tokens
- Things get worst
Similar to FI, there are multiple characters with different abilities, four items to find, and an area that must be gotten to by all the characters to claim victory, with the typical “things get worse” mechanic that games of this genre tend to have (BSG, Pandemic, FI, etc.)