Best of the season's board games

This year, my theory is that board games are to modern American society what tea leaves and animal entrails have been to others: an omen by which we can foresee our fate. Two of the season's best new offerings, Atlantis and Forbidden Island, are a grim reminder of the deluge that may await us in the age of global warming - and don't get me started on Panic Tower.

Still, board games should properly be a source of conviviality and delight, and most of the year's new releases fill that bill admirably. As in past seasons, The Chronicle's crack team of game-ology experts (actually just me and some like-minded buddies) have combed through this year's crop in an effort to separate the best from the also-rans. Here's what we found.

Family games

Atlantis (Mayfair, $35; 2-4 players; age 10+; 30 min.) To read the rules of Atlantis, you might suppose you were about to play Candyland for grown-ups and older kids - and you wouldn't be entirely wrong. But that description obscures just how straightforward, ingenious and thought-provoking this game is. The playing area is a path of colored cards that stretch across the water from the sinking island to the safety of the mainland, and players race to get all their people to land by moving to the next available tile of a given color. As the tiles disappear, those leaps get costlier, and it takes considerable planning to keep your head above water.

Forbidden Island (Gamewright, $16; 2-4 players; age 10+; 30 min.) The tradition of cooperative games exemplified by such recent hits as Matt Leacock's Pandemic takes a welcome step into the family room with Leacock's newest winner. A grid of cards represents a sinking island, from which the players in collaboration must retrieve four treasure items before making a safe exit by helicopter. Each player has a different suite of skills, which makes working together essential, and the play mechanism is straightforward enough to please kids and adults alike.

Wacky Wacky West (Mayfair, $35; 2-4 players; age 10+; 45 min.) Ignore the strenuously cartoonish Old West theme, and there's a perfectly handsome little family game lurking here. Players lay tiles to extend the streets, railroads and the river from the corners of the board into the center of town; the goal is to keep the developers from running over the buildings you have a secret stake in. That involves a nice mix of strategy, bluffing and luck - just the right balance for intergenerational play.