Dinosaur players will reveal their cards, move the dinosaurs accordingly and take an optional dinosaur action. 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. Maybe human players could explore the map, discovering the areas they need as they go? Meanwhile, the dinosaur player can look at the whole map so they know where everything is and plan accordingly. This would allow for traps & ambushes, really helping to build a sense of tension for the humans. The clever board is made of a series of hexagons that you can arrange any way you like, meaning that the board can be different every time you play, bringing new challenges to the table and making it more nail-biting than the raptors in the kitchen scene.

Jurassic Park: Danger! is for 2-5 players and each game takes roughly 50 minutes to play Ravensburger While there is some fun to be had in Jurassic Park: Danger!, especially if you're a fan of the movie, I've never seen a game have such wildly different difficulty changes depending on the number of players. Keeping it to three human players and one dinosaur player seems like the best way to go, and it's recommended you try the game like this. Any other configuration, and you might have one side feeling cheated. 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.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. 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: The game works on a board made up of tiles that are randomly laid at the start of each game. The facilities are then added at their pre-determined locations and the players start in the centre or the island with the dinosaurs starting in their pens. Jurassic Park: Danger takes place just after Dennis Nedry has shut off all the power, so the game gets right into the action. “That’s One Big Pile of Rules” Over the years there have been a number of attempts at creating a Jurassic Park board game. But none of those have come close to recreating the feel of being on Isla Nublar with dinosaurs like Jurassic Park Danger does! Anyone want to visit this peaceful island?

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. 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. Jurassic Park: Danger is a game for up to 5 players, but it works better with 4. The board, even with the clever tile system, is not actually big enough to allow for any real strategy as it is only five tiles across at its widest. The tiles would also make a great randomising element, but the four areas the humans must reach are always in the same place. This means both the dinosaur and human players always know where the other is heading, as you can guess this means fox-guarding can become a real issue. We agree that “Turtling” is a legitimate strategy, but it is also very boring.

Players in charge of human characters control one character at a time, each has their own special ability and also a victory condition. The humans must collectively reach & activate three facilities on the map: The maintenance shed (which allows the reactivation of the electric fences), the visitors centre (this allows one player to recover lost cards) and the control centre (placing “safe zones” on key locations, stopping dinosaurs from entering.) 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. 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. There is another, similar game, from Ravensburger called Alien: Fate of The Nostromo which has all the players working together, against the Alien, towards a mission that changes as the game progresses.