- Designer: Matt Leacock
- Artist: CB Canga and Mitch Morris
- Publisher: Gamewright
- Players: 2-5 Players
- Playtime: 45 minutes
- Ages: 10+
Your rocket ship runs out of fuel on a strange moon in an alien jungle. Monsters of all sizes are coming after you and your team. What do you do? In Forbidden Jungle, you are working with other players to successfully and safely get out of a hostile, alien wilderness. You have up to 4 actions you can complete each turn, but after every player acts, the jungle gets an opportunity to fight back! Will you and your team be able to work together to power the portal to safety?
What’s In the Box?
The components of the game include:
- 20 Eggs
- 15 Hatchlings
- 15 Adults
- 13 Equipment Cards
- 17 Threat Cards
- 6 Pawns
- 6 Meter Clips
- 24 Tiles
- 1 Threat Meter with Stand
- 5 Reference Cards
- 6 Adventurer Cards
- 24 Webs
- 3 Spaceports
- 1 Rulebook
Setup
There are two ways to set up Forbidden Jungle. One is the basic set up and the other uses the 3 spaceport cards, included in the box. It is recommended to start with the basic set up for your first play, so that is what we will be exploring.
First, look at both sides of all 24 jungles tiles to become familiar with them. You will be setting aside tile #1, and then turning all other tiles face down, with the unexplored side up. Second, you will need to create your diamond shaped jungle with tiles (see rulebook for diagram), with the #1 tile at the bottom of the diamond. There will be one empty space in the middle of the diamond. There are 6 crystal tiles. Make sure that they are in the appropriate spots, per the illustration in the rulebook. You will also be adding 3 adults, 3 hatchlings and 3 eggs per the illustration. The remaining types of meeples will be along the edge of the game play area, with the webs within reach of the players. As in all of the Forbidden games, you can set the difficulty level per the threat meter, allowing players to choose how brutal they want the gameplay. Players will then divide the cards into their separate piles: Threat, Equipment, Reference and Adventurer. Shuffle the threat and equipment decks and place them face down, near the playing area. Then shuffle the 6 adventurer cards and give one to each player at random. Players should also receive a meter clip, a reference card, and a matching pawn. Use the meter clip to track your character’s health on the adventurer card. All pawns will start on tile #1, referred to as “Fools’ Landing”. You are now set up to play Forbidden Jungle!
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Objective
Simply put, the objective of Forbidden Jungle is to get all adventurers out of the jungle safely. In terms of mechanics this means players work together to accomplish the following: find a portal, position an illuminated crystal on all 4 sides of it, have every adventurer make it to the portal, and activate it. This allows the adventurers to escape the Forbidden Jungle.
Gameplay
While playing Forbidden Jungle, players are encouraged to talk out different scenarios and offer advice on each other’s turns. This is a co-op game and you are looking to get everyone out of the jungle safely.
On a player’s turn, they may take up to 4 actions: Move, Remove, Explore, and Operate Machine.
To move, a pawn may go up, down, left, or right to an adjacent tile, but never diagonally. Players cannot move through webs or skip empty spaces. There are some tunnel options and players may move from one tunnel tile to another tunnel tile.
To remove, players may remove 1 adult, 1 hatchling, 1 egg, or 1 web from their tile. The token should be returned to the supply pile after it is removed.
A player may explore a tile if they are on an unexplored side of the tile without any adults, hatchlings, eggs or webs on it. Explore a tile by flipping it over. If the tile has an equipment symbol on it, the player will draw an equipment card from the face down pile.
To operate a machine, players must be on a tile with a machine on it. If they are located there, they may spend 1 action to operate the machine. There are 4 different types of machines in Forbidden Jungle: a configurator, compeller, destruct switch, and portal. Each machine has different rules of operation. The configurator allows for 1 tile to be moved 1 or more spaces, up down, left, or right. The compeller allows a player to move all adults and hatchlings to 1 tile that is adjacent from them. The destruct switch allows a player to remove any 1 tile on the board, along with all of its contents. The portal is needed for the end game.
Players may pass equipment to each other without costing an action, as long as they are on the came tile.
After all players have taken their actions, the jungle gets a turn to respond. To do this, draw as many threat cards as the threat meter is set to. For example, if you are at level 3 threat, draw 3 threat cards, one at a time. Threat cards may allows for negative effects such as moving the adults or hatchlings, allowing the adults to spin webs, spawning, hatching or growing adversaries, discover eggs, collapsing tiles, or increasing threat. If the threat deck runs out, reshuffle all threat cards and place face down to form a new pile.
Players take turns until win conditions are met or the game is lost. Players can lose the game by being overrun, total collapse of the jungle, getting poisoned, or lost in a sink hole of becoming marooned.
“Working together is key in this game …“
Final Thoughts
Forbidden Jungle takes a lot of what is good from Forbidden Island and builds upon it. Working together is key in this game and that is always welcome at our table. In our party of four, we played as the biologist, explorer, chemist, and navigator. I can’t speak for other combinations of adventurers but I felt these flowed really well together. As the chemist, I was immune to stings from the adult monsters. Luckily we didn’t take too much damage during our play though, but I can see how it would be easy to get overwhelmed with baddies depending on how many portals you had open. We were also lucky that we only had to make it through two collapse threats, which takes out a tile for the game.
The components were well though out. The monster adults, hatchlings, and eggs were all well made. Izzie in particular, enjoyed the power crystal tiles. The addition of the machine tiles made the game interesting and the equipment cards we earned came into play to assist us in winning the game! If you are looking for a co-op game, and are a fan of the Forbidden Games, I recommend picking up Forbidden Jungle!
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