---
title: "Gamewright Forbidden Desert vs Red Raven Games Sleeping Gods"
url: "https://omorp.com/compare/gamewright-forbidden-desert-vs-red-raven-games-sleeping-gods"
site: "Elan's Best (omorp.com)"
---

# Gamewright Forbidden Desert vs Red Raven Games Sleeping Gods

Both are picks from our guide: Best Cooperative Board Games for Families and Adults (https://omorp.com/guides/toys-games/best-cooperative-board-games).

## Specs head to head

| Spec | Gamewright Forbidden Desert | Red Raven Games Sleeping Gods |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Players | 2 to 5 | 1 to 4 |
| Play time | About 45 minutes | 1 hour or more per session, roughly 12 to 20 hour campaign |
| Age | 10+ | 13+ |
| Complexity | Light to medium | Medium |
| Setup time | About 5 minutes | About 10 minutes |
| Publisher | Gamewright | Red Raven Games |
| Box contents | Desert tiles, sand markers, 6 adventurer cards and pawns, flying machine parts, storm deck, storm meter | Atlas, storybook, 400+ cards, ship board, crew and journey log |

## Gamewright Forbidden Desert

Our rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Best for: Families with kids 10 and up, and groups of up to five, trying their first cooperative game.

Forbidden Desert is Matt Leacock's follow-up to Forbidden Island, and the stronger of the two. Your team crash-lands in a desert city laid out as a grid of tiles and must dig up the four parts of a flying machine and escape before the storm buries you or the water runs out. Each player takes one of six adventurers with a special ability, such as the Climber who stands on buried tiles or the Water Carrier who refills canteens.

The clever part is the storm. A gap in the grid moves every turn, sliding tiles around it and piling sand on them, so the map you planned on is gone by your next turn. Water is shared and scarce, which forces conversations about who walks where. The storm meter starts at one of four difficulty levels, so a family can win the first game and an adult group can still lose on the hardest setting.

The weaknesses are the ones every co-op shares. A confident player can direct everyone else, and the game does nothing to stop that. Once a group masters it, replay comes only from harder difficulty.

## Red Raven Games Sleeping Gods

Our rating: 8.9 out of 10.

Best for: A couple, a solo player or a steady group of up to four who want a story campaign over many evenings.

Sleeping Gods is a cooperative storytelling campaign, and the closest a board game gets to a choose-your-path novel. Ryan Laukat designed and illustrated it, and Red Raven Games released it in 2021. Your crew sails the steamship Manticore through a strange sea in 1929, trying to find enough totems to get home. The map is an atlas book: sailing off the edge of one page opens the next, and every numbered location sends you into the storybook for an encounter with choices.

The campaign is long and flexible. Reviewers report full playthroughs of roughly 12 to 20 hours, and a journey log lets you save at any point, so sessions can be one hour or four. Combat uses cards rather than dice, and crew members gain abilities and injuries that carry forward. The box holds more than 400 cards.

The trade-offs are commitment and price. At $109.99 tracked, Sleeping Gods is the most expensive pick by far. It needs the same group, or a solo player, coming back several times. The rulebook is heavier than the other two, and replaying the same campaign is far less interesting than the first voyage.

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Source: https://omorp.com/compare/gamewright-forbidden-desert-vs-red-raven-games-sleeping-gods