276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Ravensburger Jurassic Park Danger! - Adventure Strategy Game

£9.9£99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

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. Like Dr Grant, we have decided not to endorse this park and we would have gladly paid more for a better product, both in quality and execution. Jurassic Park: Danger feels like 80% of a game, it looks like a game and sounds like a game, but it just misses the mark. 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. 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.

Once a card is burnt, it is permanently removed from the game. This is important because those cards, aside from being your actions, also double-up as your hit points. Once a player has no more cards in their hand, the character they are playing is eliminated from the game. 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. Everyone at the table had fun, and some said running from the small, wooden T-Rex provided them with the same thrill as if they were watching the movie. The game felt challenging, but fair. With a few more attempts, it's possible I could have come out on top to defeat the humans.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

The artwork for each character is pulled straight from the movie and helps give each character a distinct feel. However, the generic meeple is a let-down, as are the dinosaur pieces. It seems odd to be able to make a Jurassic Park game but not be able to use the real dinosaurs, especially as every other aspect of the game seems true to the movie. Andy’s Final Thoughts 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. 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: Dinosaur actions are specific to each dinosaur, for example the Velociraptor can move up to two spaces in a straight line. The more recent trend of having older movies converted into board game form has seen some surprising, older movies adapted for the tabletop though – and there’s an unusual thread linking them aside from their source material. Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist is an asymmetrical, one vs many game with one player taking on the role of John McClane and everyone else playing as the thieves. Other board game adaptations take the one vs many approach too, such as The Shining, Home Alone and the game I’m covering here – the awkwardly titled: Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game.

Both dinosaurs and humans can move around the board by running, climbing and sneaking, and sometimes need to roll a particular number or higher, to be allowed to perform a certain move on their card. Jurassic Park: Danger is broken up into two-player phases, the dinosaur actions and then the human actions. The dinosaur player controls three dinos at the same time, throughout the entire game and each one has a special ability to give them an edge. Jurassic Park: Danger is a 2-5 player adventure strategy game, produced by Ravensburger and set on Isla Nublar which pits one player controlling the dinosaurs against up to four other players trying to fix the facility and escape the island.

Taking the plot of the first film from the point at which the electrified fences are down and the dinosaurs are loose in the park, Jurassic Park: Danger! places one player in the role of three dinosaurs (a dilophosaurus, a velociraptor and the big bad herself, the T-Rex), with their role being to eat three tasty humans. The other players each take control of a human character from a choice of ten, with their aim being to achieve their character specific goal and restore power to three buildings on the island before escaping in the helicopter that arrives once those three buildings have been activated. Most of the action takes place on a modular game board representing Isla Nublar that has to be assembled before play. It doesn’t take long to put together and has a semi-random tile setup, so every game will have a different configuration. The three main park locations – Control Center, Visitors Center, and Maintenance Shed – are placed on their indicated spots on the board and all must be activated before the helicopter can arrive. (This is the primary goal for the humans.) The dinosaurs are also placed on their indicated spaces and the human characters all begin the game in the middle on the “Start” tile. While the dinosaur player always uses the same trio of terrible lizards each game, those playing the humans can choose (or randomly select) from ten memorable characters all masterfully played by Jeff Goldblum: Only one team can win Jurassic Park Danger. For the human team to win they must succeed in escaping a specific number of characters relevant to the number of players. For the dinosaur player to win they must eliminate three human characters. Have you got what it takes? Jurassic Park: Danger! Gameplay Plus it doesn’t take me long to convince other members of our family to play again when I tell them they can control the dinosaurs. 🙂 It’s a T-Riffic board game based on Jurassic Park! Play as the main characters, working as a team, and try to escape the island before the dinosaurs get you.

Once that is done, human players will reveal their cards, move their characters accordingly and play optional free actions. The challenge of the game for the players playing as the human characters comes in figuring a way to use the actions on the cards to maneuver around the island, activate the locations, achieve their personal goal, and get to the helicopter pad.Before you start, you will need to read the instructions quite thoroughly and it seems a bit complicated but we found that once you get going it doesn’t take long at all to get the hang of the moves and the turns, and the game was soon flowing well. There is an instruction video here which can help if needed. 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. 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. Dinosaur players will reveal their cards, move the dinosaurs accordingly and take an optional dinosaur action.

I didn't have the opportunity to play with four human players, but it seems like that would be an unfair advantage for the humans. Adding another character to chase after as the dinosaur team sounds like it would be way more challenging than having an equal number of members on each team. One player plays as the dinosaurs against the other players, who play as the iconic team of humans fighting for their life. The humans have to enable major centres on the island before getting to the helipad and flying to safety. But, if the T-Rex, Velociraptor, and Dilophosaurus munch three characters, the humans lose! If it is not already abundantly clear, what makes Jurassic Park: Danger successful is that it completely plays to the narrative and themes of the film. This game is a total victory for big fans of Jurassic Park both young and old, and I think the designers made a lot of excellent choices in terms of creating a exciting and accessible game that has quite a bit more depth to it than you might expect. 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. Fast forward to now – 25 years later – where the Jurassic Park experience has been aptly transferred into a fun and challenging board game.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.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment