The original Jumanjic movie starring Robin Williams came out in 1995. Many years later we have a video game version of that classic cursed board game for the Nintendo Switch, PC and mobile devices. I love the movie and it seems like this is a good idea for a game so it felt like the perfect title to play with my son.
Jumanji: The Curse Returns is a four player game where players work as a team and try to get to the center of the wooden board. But before you can jump into the multiplayer mode, you have to play through a tutorial to teach you the ropes of the game. First you need to select which character you want to play with and which animal token you want to use. There are eight different people you can be: Judy, Peter, Alan and Sarah from the original Jumanjic movie are here, featuring four other random characters Holly, Lucas, AJ and Yuke. I was a little surprised that the characters from the newer Jumanjic movies were not there.
Players choose which card to play: Brantford – the town where the movie took place, or the generic Winter Resort, each with six locations to protect. I have no idea why the characters decided to take this board game to sit outside in the snow and play! You roll the two dice and move around the board; if you roll double, you may roll again. When your token stops on a space, a message appears in the center of the board, giving you a riddle as to what happens next. Sometimes you will lose a turn and have to go back or come to a box where you will be given a choice between two jewels that will strengthen your token, but most of the time the team will have to fight angry animals with card games. There were often times when the same riddle popped up and we had to fight the same animals again. It would have been nice to fight a wider variety of enemies from the movie or even other jungle species. To win, one of the team’s tokens must come to the center of the board and, just like in the movie, say “Jumanji!” call.
In battle, three cards are drawn at once and you choose the card you want to play with and which animal you want to aim it at. Three animals appear at once, and there is usually one that is stronger than the others. To defeat these Alpha characters, you must use a Token attack, as regular attack cards cannot harm them. Each card has a value of one, two or three, which corresponds to the amount the timer must fill before you can attack. The low number cards are weaker and faster to use; for those with a higher number, you have to wait before using them. Once you get the hang of it, chances are you’ll hit the mash button and hit the first green card you find to make sure you don’t run out of time on the clock.
You will never run out of cards as they are constantly shuffled during battle. Each enemy has a rage meter and when it drops to zero, it will climb up to your team to attack your team. Some cards will reset this meter, forcing them to wait again for it to run out. Vines begin to wrap around the various characters and their cards. To free yourself or your teammates, you must use an ax card on this aggressive vegetation; this is the only way out. It feels wrong to target yourself or teammates with an axe! If you are overcome by vines, you can ask your teammates for help, but I must warn you that the only character that helped me was my son, not the computer characters.
Winning these battles will earn you coins that you can spend on new cards that you can add to your hand. These are color-coded based on what they do: green cards attack and blue are magic cards that you can use to replenish the health of yourself or your teammates. Others have different effects, such as adding time to the clock when you fight or can be used to boost your token. If you are defeated, Vines will take over that location on the map, and if you lose five times, you will lose the game. If you’re defeated, you’ll still get some coins for your efforts to add to your deck.
Wild animals aren’t the only things to worry about while playing Jumanji: The Curse Returns; Van Pelt, the hunter with the crazy mustache, will actively hunt you once he is released. So he will shoot at you during jungle fighting in the wild. He damages your teammates and prevents you from earning Team Up points that allow everyone to launch an attack together. There’s no way to attack him, so you’ll just have to put up with it until the end of that game.
The images of Jumanji: The Curse Returns are dated and look like they would belong on a mobile device. The characters looked vaguely like their movie counterparts and had the same hair color, but nothing made them stand out. Most beautiful were the carved tokens that slide around the Jumanji board. The soundtrack was also very bland, and there was nothing memorable about it; I had to go back to check if there was music playing as I couldn’t remember any. Usually there were only sound effects based on the area of the map you were in. Sometimes you can hear a few drums and flutes giving it a tribal jungle vibe, but that didn’t last long.
Unfortunately, Jumanji: The Curse Returns just not translated into a great video game. It was very repetitive and felt better suited to playing on a mobile device, where you would only play for short periods, rather than on the Nintendo Switch. The same riddles appear during the same round, and the characters who always did the same reaction animations when winning or losing got old pretty quickly; this game is very repetitive! You do have the option to play online with friends, but after a round there is a good chance that you will no longer play. With a board game like Jumanjic you would think it would feel more magical or have a wider variety of challenges instead of just clicking on a map. Or, if you want to make it more of a card game, get more strategy. To add variety, perhaps trying to prevent animals from coming at you in a stampede, or a mini-game where you have to use the card with the rope attached, give the animal a lasso. Harming an animal by throwing a coiled rope at it seems very strange. It’s a bad sign if the kid you’re playing with who loves the movie is incredibly bored and would rate it even lower than me.
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