Cooperative group board games are not very good at what they set out to do. First, the setup is extremely convoluted. Most teamwork is done in setting up the board, that in itself is a challenge that requires a lot of communication. Secondly, The main problem with them is the instruction booklet is more akin to an actual book. There are a lot of instructions that it becomes teamwork to try and remember them all. Unintentional teamwork once again is displayed at this point. The team has to remember all the rules and come to consensus on how to interpret them. During class period Tuesday as a group the instruction booklet was consulted at nearly every turn and we were unsure if we were playing correctly. Asking players to keep track of many things and even worse when those things are more abstract ideas is bad game design.
    Furthermore, the game’s intention is to put the players at odds. It wants to inhibit communication to make the game harder to play. However, many of the things that would inhibit would just delay the game more so than hinder communication. This is because many of the things that the game could prevent communication would be done in parallel at the start of the round. However, even by the middle of the game the inhibitions were so great it would be hard to play a round. The game also just boiled down to who was able to do mental addition the fastest. 

Sources:

Mountains of Madness, Angry Lion Games (2017)