Ravensburger Jurassic Park Danger! - Adventure Strategy Game

Product Information

The recommended age by the publisher is 10+. And we guess that’s about the age Timmy was in the movie. So if he can take the taxing demands of being chased by dinosaurs around the island, so can 10 year olds in your family. As for the dinosaur player, they control all three of the carnivores – TREX, Dilophosaurus and Velociraptor, which the ability to move all three during one turn, depending on their cards and strategy. Each dinosaur has one “special move” that can be used in addition to their card moves, which can help to give the dinosaur player an advantage.

Gravehold remains the last bastion of The World That Was. As the otherworldly incursions from the creatures known only as The Nameless intensify, a cadre of strange survivors emerge from the void itself. Will they be Gravehold’s salvation or its undoing? The game comes with a board that’s made up of a few puzzle-like pieces to create Isla Nubla. Within the island, you will find the control centre, visitor centre, maintenance shed and helicopter pad. You also see a varied terrain with cliffs that need to be climbed over, and electric fences which can be activated once a human player visits the maintenance shed. Even recently, the most popular – or at least most prevalent – licensed games tend to be Monopoly reskins that do nothing to change the game except (yep, you guessed it) amend the text and illustrations. I must note, however, that there have been some decent attempts at changing this, with the Mario and Sonic ‘Gamer’ variants having much more streamlined play and elements such as bosses to deal with. Jurassic Park: Danger could be improved because we would have loved to have played a fun Jurassic Park themed board game. The tile system reminds us of Betrayal at House on The Hill but is not done quite as well.

About Jurassic Park Danger!

And kids even younger than 10 may enjoy playing Jurassic Park Danger since it’s a semi-cooperative game. That means they can team up with other family members as one of the human characters in the game trying to escape from the dinosaurs and leave the island. Run Timmy, Run! We would like to start this review by saying both Andy & Dom are huge fans of Jurassic Park (apart from the third one…) and the magic of the original 1993 film holds a special place for both of us. Having said that, we feel “ Jurassic Park: Danger” sadly fails to capture this magic and bring it to the table. One thing ‘Jurassic Park: Danger!’ has an abundance of is theme. From the unique traits of each playable character to the way the game recreates key plot points and your favorite scenes, many fans of the film will find a lot to like here. Just like in the movie, it’s not exactly a picnic in the park, particularly for the human players who have it rough from the very beginning. Be prepared; time isn’t on your side and characters will die. The personal goals don’t make things any easier by throwing a wrench into your already desperate plans. Fortunately, there is some relief by activating the locations which grant bonuses, like being able to recover cards from a discard pile, creating safe dinosaur-free zones, and powering up the electric fences all over Isla Nubar. Being the humans is punishing and often frustrating, but I like that puzzle aspect of trying to make things work the best you can even when things may seem hopeless. If you watched even a small part of our video review, you most likely heard me mention how hard the game is for the human characters to win. I do think the dinosaur player is slightly overpowered. Since (s)he knows what the characters’ goals are (including activating the locations), it’s really easy to cut people off. We’ll see how we feel after a few more plays.

Personally I really like the difficult challenge of playing the struggling humans trying to escape. Failing in this game gives me the drive to go at it again. The concept of the game is that one player plays as the dinosaurs, and the other plays each play as one of the human characters. The humans then work together to help as many of them as possible escape from the dinosaurs onto the helicopter and away to safety. The start location is always only 4 moves away from the escape point, making it extremely difficult for the dinosaur player to stop humans from escaping in the end phase of the game. Thematically, if Dennis “Marathons are for Losers” Nedry can outpace a velociraptor, you should probably revisit your game mechanics. But some victory conditions can be frustrating. Like John Hammond, who starts with his token but losses it if another character is killed. Remember, a character can only escape the island if they have their victory token. This means if the T-Rex gets Mr Genaro before Dr Hammond gets to the helicopter, Hammond is rendered almost useless and all but guarantees the dinosaur player another point. A Different Breed Even with more human than dinosaur pawns on the board, it’s still a challenge. Because once the humans activate the locations, they still need to have enough cards remaining to make their way to the helicopter pad to get away and win. So card management is a big factor in the game as well. Whew – one person has made it safely to the helicopter.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

There’s a recent trend in the board games world that’s seen classic movies adapted into tabletop form. Licensed games tend to have a very bad name, for good reason; they’re often rushed to meet the release date of a movie or lazily shoehorned into an existing format – and aimed at undiscerning or just plain unaware consumers. The most common expectation, certainly when I was a kid, was that a licensed game would be nothing more than a roll and move game with some loosely thematic text and illustrations slapped onto the board and components. Jurassic Park: Danger! is for 2-5 players and each game takes roughly 50 minutes to play Ravensburger

As I mentioned in the video, in our family we all like playing the role of the dinosaurs. Hopefully that doesn’t divulge an inner evil nature but rather just the fun of being able to control so many different dinosaurs at once. It’s definitely fun to find ways to thwart the human characters’ plans of escape. The game works on a board made up of tiles that are randomly laid at the start of each game. The facilities are then added at their pre-determined locations and the players start in the centre or the island with the dinosaurs starting in their pens. Jurassic Park: Danger takes place just after Dennis Nedry has shut off all the power, so the game gets right into the action. “That’s One Big Pile of Rules” There is also a serious scaling issue. With less than four players, the dinosaur player wins. This is easily alleviated by players playing more than one character, but then I think that the accessibility suffers and the game becomes somewhat over-thinky for what it is. But then with four or five, it can feel more sluggish than you want this 45-60 minute design to be.Dinosaur actions are specific to each dinosaur, for example the Velociraptor can move up to two spaces in a straight line. Once that is done, human players will reveal their cards, move their characters accordingly and play optional free actions. And that may be a challenge for younger players without a bit of help. It’s challenging to slip past the dinosaurs, activate the locations, and escape. At the end of each round players have the option to replenish their hand with cards that have been discarded.

We’ve played a number of times and are still looking for the elusive human victory. The first time we played the game, we weren’t clear on a few points during specific situations that ultimately did have an impact on the outcome. Once we cleared up those points, the human characters fared much better – although they still didn’t escape. Some human characters’ victory rules are interesting. Tim & Lex, for example, need to visit certain areas on the board to get their victory token, and this is one of the really good aspects of Jurassic Park: Danger as it adds another level of planning and difficulty for the human players. During the game, if your character has already escaped, or been eliminated by a dinosaur, you are allowed to choose another character to play as so you will still be in play continuing with the game. Jurassic Park Danger definitely scores high on my “let’s play again” game meter. But that’s not the same for everyone in our family.This game includes 110x Cards, 11 Player Mats, 19 x Island Tiles, 5x Perimeter Frames, 10 Character Movers, 3x Dinosaur Movers, 13x Fences, 19x Tokens, 1x Dice & Instructions. This game is suitable for 2-5 players. Suitable for ages 10 years and up. Fully complies with all necessary UK and EU testing standards. Playing Time: 50 minutes Article number: There is another, similar game, from Ravensburger called Alien: Fate of The Nostromo which has all the players working together, against the Alien, towards a mission that changes as the game progresses. Over the years there have been a number of attempts at creating a Jurassic Park board game. But none of those have come close to recreating the feel of being on Isla Nublar with dinosaurs like Jurassic Park Danger does! Anyone want to visit this peaceful island?