Publisher: Ravensburger || Designer: Prospero Hall || Ages: 8+
Ravensburger has been on a roll with well designed IP games with Villianous, Horrified, Jaws, and now Jungle Cruise.
Jungle Cruise is based on the popular Disney ride where you are on a tour of the Jungle with a wise-cracking skipper at the helm. It’s a staple of the Disney experience and is even inspiring a new Disney movie coming out soon.
In this game you helm a boat along the river, encountering wild animals which lure your tourists off the boat, and collecting more lost tourists and goods to deliver to the end. Points are based on the amount of tourists and goods you manage to deliver.
On a turn you flip 4 encounter cards, each with varying degrees of difficulty. To pass the encounter you have to roll the amount of danger dice listed on the card. If you get a danger symbol you lose a token (tourist or goods) on your boat on the side of the boat listed. Before all that you roll a die to determine if you move 1-4 spaces. The number also determines how many encounters you must roll for. So getting a 4 moves you along the river faster but you encounter all 4 cards and possibly lose more items from your boat.
The decision making is interesting because you can rearrange your boat before your turn, maybe leaving the back of the boat empty so there is no danger choosing an encounter card that only affects the back of the boat.
Each tourist also has a family logo and one logo is secretly chosen to be the favored family, offering more points if delivered at the end. You must detour (take a longer route) to mailboxes to find out which families are not favored, in order to deduce the favored one.
Collected goods work as a set collection (getting different types gives more points). You get goods at outpost spots. These spots also allow you to reload your flare gun. Flare guns give you a one use re-roll.
The game is great for families. Nice decisions to make in the arrangement of your boat and mitigate risks. A nice small deduction aspect. There are asymmetric even special abilities for each player. And best yet, it’s thematically true to the source. Each encounter card includes a pun that you often hear from the skipper of the ride. So many great attentions to detail.
With young kids you have to manage expectations that you will lose a lot of your tourists, but there are many opportunities to get more back. Your boat is in constant flux of people leaving and coming, so you don’t feel so bad when you have bad rolls and lose people.
Overall it is a great game for you to play with your family. It’s currently exclusive to Amazon so you can get it here: Ravensburger Disney Jungle Cruise Adventure Game for Ages 8 & Up – Amazon Exclusive
