By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: bought the game, tried the highest difficulty

We hadn’t really considered playing any board game of the Forbidden Games series, a series of cooperative board games by Matt Leacock, which are supposed to be similar to Pandemic but lighter in terms of complexity and more budget friendly. Our hesitation lasted until one day, its most latest game Forbidden Jungle was on big sale. We thought it could be a good light filler game while searching for a new heavy weight game after successfully finishing one of the most difficult scenarios of Frostpunk: The Board Game. We thought we are so great for beating the scenario of what we consider as one of the most complex co-op board games that there’s no way we could lose in a game like Forbidden Jungle. No way. Until the game brought us back to Earth to face the reality (not really, it was an alien planet).

We lost our first game. And quite a few of the later ones. Almost every time we lost, it felt as if we were thiiiiiis close to winning. While it’s necessary to develop a strategy to beat the game, there is a significant degree of randomness. This sets in right at the beginning, as it’s not possible to choose the character with the special power you want, they are randomly assigned. The randomness can make it difficult to plan ahead. There were many times where we were playing mostly reactively. This is not exactly our favorite style of play, but it can lead to many very suspenseful moments.

The setting/theme

The basic premise seems simple enough. You play as adventurers who have crash landed in an alien jungle. To get home, you have to find a portal. Simple, right? Wrong. It isn’t enough to find the Portal, it also needs to be surrounded by four active Crystals to power it. Discovering these is one thing, getting them into position another. Luckily, there are some discoverable alien machines that can help. Unfortunately for our intrepid crew there is further danger from the local wildlife, which probably wiped out whoever built the machines. These lifeforms occur in three distinct shapes in different stages of their lifecycle. In addition to the fully grown adults, there are also hatchlings and eggs. These do different things, but they are all have a adorably icky design. Eggs are simple, they just lie around until they hatch. Hatchlings start moving around without doing anything else or posing any danger until they grow up. Adults show more varied behavior. They also move, they lay eggs, they spin nets that impede the adventurer’s movement, and they try to eat the face of any human they come across.

Escaping the Jungle

So, how does the game work? On each players turn they take up to four actions, choosing from four possible options. You can use an action to move from one tile to the next or from one tunnel tile to another. Another option is to remove one adult, hatchling, egg, or a net from your tile. If you are on an undiscovered tile that is free of any aliens or nets, you can discover what’s hidden in the jungle by flipping it. Finally, if you have already discovered one the machines left behind by the civilization that existed in this place before having their faces eaten, you can use an action to use it. What, then, are those machines? There’s the configurator, which allows you to slide a tile in a straight line, as long as it ends up next to another tile. There’s the destruct switch, which you can use to blow up a tile and everything on it. There’s the compeller, which you can use to move adults and hatchlings from one tile to the next. Finally, there’s the portal, which you can use to go home. If you managed to surround it with four glowing crystals and free it from the aliens and their nets, that is.

The Jungle has eyes and… agency?

After a player acts it’s the Jungle’s turn. The player has to draw between two and five Threat cards, based on the current threat level. Most of these either cause the aliens to do their various things or more of them to appear in various places. However, there are three different cards. One simply increases the threat level. A second one increases the threat level and makes you shuffle the discard pile and put it at the bottom of the draw deck. The third is the most interesting one. It causes the tile with the lowest number to collapse along with everything on it, although adventurers can escape to an adjacent tile. The first place to go is always the starting tile, Fool’s Landing. Later on, it’s generally the useful machine tiles that tend to go first. One of the many ways to lose is if all four portals or one of the four glowing Crystals are gone. There have been numerous times where we were almost ready to leave, only for the Portal tile to collapse.

The other ways to lose are if someone has their face eaten by the aliens, if someone is on a collapsing tile without a way to escape, or if you have to place more adults, hatchlings, eggs, or nets than you can. Luckily, during you exploration you can find various pieces of gear to help you avoid these predicaments, such as a jetpack or a time machine.

Our Final Thoughts

Forbidden Jungle is a surprisingly challenging game that combines exploration, crisis (alien) management, and a sliding tile puzzle. But one important thing that we realized after playing it was just because a game is not complex, doesn’t mean that it would be easy to beat. Complexity doesn’t equate difficulty. We’ve tried the highest difficulty of Forbidden Jungle three times, but we never got to escape the jungle. With the highest difficulty of Frostpunk: The Board Game, we won in our third attempt.

While we both like games that aren’t completely deterministic, the randomness in this game is at the higher end of the scale for our taste. And, unlike Frostpunk, we felt we had less agency in Forbidden Jungle, which can be less motivating in terms of trying it out again. Using the destruct switch and blowing up parts of the playing field feels very satisfying and slightly anarchic though.

Kaysee’s rating: 2.5/5
Max’s rating: 3.5/5

Combined rating: 3/5

Title: Forbidden Jungle (2023)
Game Design: Matt Leacock
Artist: C. B. Canga
Edition: German
Publishers: Gamewright, Schmidt Spiele

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