I’ll admit: I’m a child of the ’80s and ’90s, and I will forever love Robin Williams in the movie Jumanji. If you love the movie as much as me, read on to decide if the game is worth it for you.
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I picked up Jumanji cheap at the thrift store because of the nostalgia effect. I love the movie, don’t you? Especially Robin Williams. I’d already heard that the game wasn’t worth it, but for $1.50, I had to find out myself. And, I was surprised. I was expecting a thoroughly boring cooperative game, but it’s actually not cooperative! There’s a way for all players to lose, but only one player wins.
How to play Jumanji
Each player (up to four) has their own path. If you land on a blank space, you draw a card and use the nifty decoder guy in the center to read the card. All the rest of the players have to roll to save you – don’t bother getting this game, even on sale, if your kids don’t understand how to roll quickly, because there is an hourglass timer (just 10 seconds!). But if they get it, they get to move forward. If they don’t, the card is added to the “Doomsday Grid”.
If you land on a jungle space, ALL players roll, and if everyone gets the thing you’re rolling for (the cards show what you need to roll), then you all move forward the number of spaces shown on the card. If not everyone gets a match, though, then the card is added to the Doomsday Grid, AND, you have to draw another card and roll for it all over again! When you land on a jungle space, It’s possible to get several cards added to the Doomsday Grid.
Problems my family had with Jumanji
The next two spaces were what caused some meltdowns for my family. On the first turn, my daughter landed on a rhino space, which allows you to move the rhino to block someone else. So, of course, she had to move the rhino to block her brother, because that’s what siblings do, right? Only, she didn’t have to move the rhino; the instructions say “You may if you wish.” So of course, when she was one space away from winning, her brother had to put the rhino in front of her. It only took her one turn to roll an even, but the damage was done.
The other meltdown-causing space was the 5 or 8 space. If you land on this space, everyone else has to take turns trying to roll a 5 or an 8. For every roll they make that isn’t a 5 or an 8, you have to move back one space. Sometimes, a 5 or 8 was rolled very quickly, but sometimes, it took a looong time to roll one. Which meant that person had to move several spaces backward.
How to make Jumanji cooperative
In retrospect, I should not have chosen the day I did to first play Jumanji. My husband had been out of state for a week, trying to get our bus finished up (even though we’d hired someone to do it, they just weren’t getting it done and we needed to leave for our first workamping job), so everyone was a bit emotionally fragile. As I said, I’d thought it would be a cooperative game. A slight rewording in the rules probably would have done the trick. “In order for everyone to win, just one person needs to make it to the center.”
Overall, I definitely wouldn’t pay full price for Jumanji. We might keep it for a bit, but I don’t think this game has a long-term place on our shelves. There’s no real strategy or skill in the game; it’s all quick die rolls. But you can head on over to our YouTube channel to watch us play through Jumanji and decide for yourself.
Edit to add: Looking for a better Jumanji game? Check out Jumanji Fluxx!! It feels much more true to the movie!