Year: 2023 | Players: 2-5 | Minutes: 45+ | Ages: 10+
This Forbidden Jungle review was made after playing the game eight times. The publisher sent us a copy of this game in exchange for an honest review.
What is Forbidden Jungle?
Forbidden Jungle is a cooperative survival game in which you attempt to work together to escape a jungle spaceport.
Forbidden Jungle was designed by Matt Leacock and is published by Gamewright. This is the fourth game in the Forbidden series after Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert, and Forbidden Sky.
Rules Overview
In Forbidden Jungle, you and your fellow adventurers have crashed on a jungle-covered spaceport and need to find a way to power up a portal so you can escape. That isn’t an easy task, though, because it isn’t a totally stable spaceport and a bunch of alien spiders stand in your way. Your goal is to find a portal and then position four crystals around it to power it.
Each adventurer has a unique power that they can use throughout the game. The spiders don’t have ongoing abilities, but once they grow from eggs to hatchlings to adults, they can spin webs that slow you down and they can sting you.
You can take up to four actions on your turn. The four types of actions are:
- Move – Move left, right, up, or down to an adjacent tile. You can also move through tunnels once they’re revealed.
- Remove – Remove any spider from your tile, regardless of size.
- Explore – Flip the tile you’re currently on to show its explored side. Some tiles will give you Equipment cards, which are free, powerful actions that can be played at any time.
- Operate Machine – A lot of the tiles have machines that you can use. The Compellers let you move hatchlings and adult spiders to other tiles. The Destruct Switches let you remove tiles from the board. The most important machine is the Configurator, which you use to shift tiles around; you need this action to position the four crystals around a portal.
After you’ve taken your four actions, you draw a number of Threat cards equal to the current threat level. These cards can add more spiders to the jungle, grow the spiders from eggs to hatchlings or hatchlings to adults, move the spiders, add webs to tiles, or even remove tiles from the game. When an adult moves, it stings any adventurers on its tile.
There are also Threat cards that raise the threat level. As the threat level rises, you’ll have to draw more cards, making the game tougher.
You’ll win if all four illuminated crystals are around a portal, all adventurers are on the portal, and no spiders are on that tile.
There are five ways to lose: (1) you need to add any type of spider and none are remaining in the supply; (2) the threat meter reaches the highest level; (3) any adventurer loses all of their health; (4) a tile collapses with an adventurer on it and they don’t have a tile to move to; or (5) all four of the portals or one of the illuminated crystals are removed.
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Pros and Cons
Pros
- To me, the highlight of Forbidden Jungle is the slide puzzle minigame. It’s really cool to see how the jungle shifts around as you play, and getting everything in place is very satisfying.
- I like that the spiders can move randomly depending on the threat cards you draw. That unpredictability keeps the game pretty exciting throughout and can force you to adjust your plans as the game plays out.
- The fear of key tiles collapsing brings a nice amount of tension to most games.
- Forbidden Jungle has plenty of replay value. A big reason for that is the different combinations of adventurers you can play with, which change how you approach each game. Plus, there are seven different spaceport layouts and multiple difficulty levels.
- I like the equipment cards in this game (and the other Forbidden games) because they allow you to help out even on someone else’s turn. I wish more cooperative games had cards like these.
- The reference cards are great.
Cons
- Forbidden Jungle has a nice look to it, but it’s also a bit visually busy. That sometimes makes it hard to see the colors on the tiles when you need to move the spiders.
- Those adult spider figures fall down a bit too often. We just lay them on the tiles rather than trying to get them all to stay upright.
- As with the other games in this series, quarterbacking can be an issue since there is no hidden information.
Final Thoughts
I knew I was going to enjoy playing Forbidden Jungle since I’m a fan of the other three games in this series, but I ended up liking it more than I thought I would. It has a cool and unique theme, the slide puzzle is great, and it’s a good challenge even at the lower difficulty levels. It has a lot of what I like from Forbidden Island and Desert in it, but the all-around feel of the game is definitely different. It’s also slightly heavier than those two. I’m keeping all three.
If you’re a fan of Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, chances are you’re going to like Forbidden Jungle, too. If you thought those other two were too lightweight, Jungle might work better for you.
If you’re curious about my current Forbidden rankings:
- Forbidden Desert – My favorite theme and the sand-shifting is my favorite mechanism in the series.
- Forbidden Island – This is easily the cleanest design and it’s one of the best beginner-friendly board games out there.
- Forbidden Jungle
- Forbidden Sky – Very satisfying ending, but it’s my least favorite theme and it doesn’t look as good as the other three.
All four are solid co-op games.
Forbidden Jungle Links
BGG | Amazon | Game Nerdz
Thanks for taking the time to read our Forbidden Jungle review!
Be sure to also take a look at our Best Cooperative Board Games list and the other board game rankings.
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