Head back to your favorite dinosaur preserve in Jurassic Park Danger!; A 2-5 player semi-cooperative game of cat and mouse from Ravensburger Games, where one player is the dinosaurs; hunting the others (humans) as they restore several vital buildings on the island, complete their personal challenge and escape to the helicopter alive!
To start. First, assemble the island by taking the frame pieces and connecting them together. Next place the perimeter tiles, the center tiles, and the start tile directly in the center. Put the dinosaurs in their starting places, the maintenance shed, control center, and visitors center tokens where indicated, and a character meeple for each player at the start location. Give each player a player mat and deck of cards matching their character and goal token. The dinosaur player takes the dinosaur deck, player mat, and dinosaur token, placing it on the rest space. The dinosaur player shuffles their deck and draws 3 cards for their starting hand. Set all the other tokens aside and you are ready to play.
Jurassic Park Danger! is played in turns and each one has 4 steps: Dinosaurs play a card, humans play a card, dinosaurs move, and humans move.
First, the dinosaur player will select one card and place it face down, then draws a new one to add to their hand. The human players may use any of their cards 10 to play; also choosing one and placing it face down. The dinosaur player then reveals their card and takes the action indicated.
A run action allows a dinosaur to move to an adjacent tile unless there is an active electric fence or cliff. A climb action allows a dinosaur to climb up a cliff and deactivated fences. A sneak allows a dinosaur to move into an adjacent tile undetected. A dinosaur card may have 2 or 3 actions on it. The player then chooses one action per dinosaur. If a dinosaur lands on a tile with a human that is not sneaking, it immediately attacks.
When dinosaur attacks, the human player burns one card from their deck at random chosen by the dinosaur player. A burned card is permanently removed from the game. The human player may look at the chosen card, but the dinosaur player cannot.
The humans then flip their card and take that action. Humans move in the same way as the dinosaurs do. They also can choose to run, climb or sneak, in addition to actions specific to their character. Humans also have some free actions they can choose to do (restore a building, distract) A player can attempt to restore a facility by rolling the dice, succeeding on a 5 or higher. Each facility once active gives a bonus to increase the player’s chances.
When the control center is active, the dinosaurs may no longer go to the visitors center, maintenance shed, control center, and helipad. The maintenance shed will activate all of the electric fences and the visitors center will allow any player to return two cards from their discard pile to their hand. Once all three locations are active, the helipad is available to run to and escape. However, before escaping each human has to complete their personal objective.
Each human has a personal objective, it can be as simple as making it to a location on the board or as complex as having to distract a dinosaur as an action. Once a player has completed their objective and all three locations are active, it’s a race to get to the helipad before the dinosaurs defeat you. If all the players escape, they win, if not, the dinosaur player wins.
While the game plays simple, use a card and take an action, it is far from it. Those dinosaurs are fierce and with the right player will hunt you down. So much so, that if a player is killed (no cards in their hand to burn when attacked) they can pick a new character and start over. In addition, while the dinosaur deck can be reshuffled a human player cannot. A human player only regains cards when an action permits or they decide to burn the remaining cards in their hand to retrieve their discarded ones. Getting those facilities up and running only slows down the dinosaurs, it doesn’t stop them. And if not careful, a player may be on the wrong side of an electric fence, cutting them off from getting to the helicopter.
This is a game of critical decisions and quick moves, stay too long in one area, and you are bound to get attacked, delay getting the buildings up and running, and you have no chance of rescue. There is tension to go around in this game, and that dinosaur player, if they have the right cards, can wreck any player’s chance of survival. Since you can start over with a new character, it may be beneficial to let your current character die and start fresh, especially once the buildings are active, the fences are on, and the dinosaurs are now limited in where they can go.
Humans do have some mitigating tactics. They have the option to voluntarily burn cards adding one for each card they burn if they fail a roll. Again, with only 10 cards, players have some tough decisions to make, and not all are easy.
Jurassic Park Danger! has a high replayability, as the island map is made up of tiles, that can change every game. The game has good solid wood meeples, quality card stock, and sturdy cardboard for the tiles. Fans of the movies will probably really enjoy this as it feels like reliving it on your tabletop, only now they are the prey instead of the observer.
It is not easy to make good games out of intellectual properties like movies, but Ravensburger has done quite well in the past, especially with their Wonder Woman and Jaws games. Jurassic Park Danger! is another game rich in theme, with plenty of solid game as well. So what are you waiting for? Get a charter flight and head over to Jurassic Park, the natives are looking forward to meeting you!
Written by Ed Carter
Evan Conroy
Ron Peterson