The fourth in Gamewright’s Forbidden… series, Forbidden Jungle combines shifting tiles, spider webs, alien beasties and imminent death in a delightful – and slightly brutal – 2-5 player co-operative game.
Scenario
Trapped on an abandoned spaceport, you and your fellow adventurers must find a portal, surround it with active crystals, and escape. Sounds easy enough…
You are not alone
Scattered across the board are alien eggs, hatchlings, and adults, and they don’t stay still. At the end of each player turn, threat cards often have one of those alien types move in one of four directions, indicated by the icon type on the tile edge. Alternatively, aliens might evolve, with eggs changing into hatchlings or hatchlings into adults. Or they might multiply. Draw the wrong sequence of Threat cards and you might find yourselves suddenly overrun. The good news – only adults bite. The bad news – there could be adults everywhere sooner than you anticipate. Too many bites, and your adventurer dies, ending the game. Running out of an alien type also ends the game.
Gathered in an alien-free portal, surrounded by active crystals, our adventurers bask in smug victory
Did I mention spiders?
Okay, so there are no spiders (arachnophobes, take a breath). There are webs though, and similar to the sand in Forbidden Desert, they can limit your movement. Webs form between tiles, creating a sticky barrier that blocks your path. But not the aliens’ paths of course, because life is not fair.
What can you do to survive?
On your turn, you can take up to four actions. You can choose from moving, eliminating webs or aliens, flipping a tile, using a tile ability, and using your character ability.
Movement: move to an adjacent tile. You cannot move diagonally, nor through a web
Remove: remove an alien or web from your tile. Some characters can remove more than 1 per action
Explore: as long as your tile is clear of aliens and webs, flip the tile and see what you can find!
· Crystal tiles: crystals are either active (pink/purple) or broken (grey and sad-looking). You need four active crystals to activate the portal
· Portal: surround this with four active crystals to win the game
· Nests: eggs can spawn here. (Flipping this tile might have been a mistake)
· Tunnels: enter a tunnel in one area, and exit through a tunnel in a completely different area of the jungle! Also, hatchlings might spawn here. (More mistakes)
· Electrifier: zaps any hatchlings or adults that enter this tile, removing them from the tile. (Strangely satisfying)
· Equipment: as with other Forbidden… games, cards with the cog symbol mean a bonus equipment card for you. Enjoy and use wisely
· ‘Machine’ cards: where things get good…
Equipment cards – perhaps the difference between survival and being alien chow
Operate machine: machines help you manipulate the board and aliens, and generally cause chaos. I think they’re great.
· Configurator: slide a tile up, down, left, or right one or more places, ensuring its final position is adjacent to at least one other tile. This is a great way to move adventurers and aliens on the tile to another part of the board, break webs, and of course, relocate crystals and portals so that they are next to each other
· Destruct switch: blow up a tile! This is even more fun if it has aliens and/or webs on it. You cannot blow up a tile that has another adventurer on it – even if that player has eaten the last of the game snacks… Also keep in mind that the game itself will start destroying tiles, so you don’t want to lose too many tiles, nor cause the game to destroy something that you need
· Compeller: lure hatchlings and adults and to an adjacent tile (did anyone say ‘Electrifier’?)
Configurator: let’s send that adult alien for a ride!
A rising threat
After a player takes their turn, they draw a number of threat cards equal to the current threat level. This can cause alien multiplication, movement, or evolution. Webs can form, tiles disappear, or the threat level rise. None of this is good. As the threat level increases, the amount of threat cards that you draw on subsequent rounds also increases.
Aliens on the move…
‘So, this is your idea of fun?’
Yes. After all, I like a good co-operative game, and Forbidden Jungle is a good one. What initially seems to be an easy-to-manage, pretty jungle-based game with cutesy aliens, soon turns into a chaotic and strategic race against cutesy, bitey aliens. Many cutesy, bitey aliens.
In addition to the lovely alien miniatures, I enjoy the mechanics that come with the machines. Being able to rearrange the board opens possibilities that can completely change the following turn, and luring aliens into the bug zapper (electrifier) is immensely satisfying.
Gamewright puts together a short and simple guidebook that makes Forbidden Jungle easy to learn and keeps things on track. It covers most questions sensibly, with visual examples to provide clarity. Calling out the significance of the icons on the tile edges would have sped our initial setup – it took us a moment to link the icon on the Move cards to those on the tile edges – and the icons on the tiles could be clearer against the dark backgrounds. There is a typo in one of the layout designs that caused us to think we’d lost a tile, but thankfully this wasn’t the case! The player aides are helpful and player cards clear. All in all, this is well thought out.
Gotta love a good player aide
Forbidden Jungle is an enjoyable co-op that blends tension and strategy in an approachable way. Suitable for experienced and inexperienced gamers alike, this game also works as a nice introduction to co-ops for the uninitiated. Familiar mechanisms for Forbidden… fans blend with creative twists that make this a worthy member of the Forbidden… family.
