LogFAQs > #897857041

23. Jungle Speed
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8098/jungle-speed

Genre/mechanics: Pattern recognition, speed/dexterity, party game
Rules complexity: 2/10
Game length: 10-20 minutes
Player count: 2-8
Experience: 15+ games with 5-8
First played: 2015

In Jungle Speed, you have a stack of cards with colored geometric figures on them. On your turn, you flip one over onto your face-up pile. If your card's shape matches anyone else's, you are now in a "duel" with that player, and you must race to grab a rubber totem pole in the center of the table. The loser of the duel takes the winner's face-up pile into their draw deck and is next to play. A few cards have no shapes but rather mix things up. Run out of cards, and you win.

Enjoyment - Jungle Speed is the last of the party games introduced during that first year of being in the hobby, and the most reliably fun. It's a nice icebreaker that certainly depends on skill, but is high-variance and swing-y enough on any given play that three different people can easily win in three sittings.

Design - Jungle Speed is one of the simplest games out there, so it's critical that it get everything right. And it does. The first key element is that the core gameplay is not trivially easy. The cards can be deceptively difficult to distinguish - is that bunch of squares surrounding one small square, or are they surrounding one small circle? If you grab the stick out of turn, everyone gives you their face-up cards. The constant threat of a duel keeps you on your toes at all times.

The core gameplay is so tight that you don't need a lot to mix it up, but the mix-up cards are excellent. One causes you to match - for one turn only - by color instead of by shape. It comes at just the right time to melt your brain and make you panic. Then there's another to make sure you're always engaged: a free-for-all race to grab the stick, where anyone can participate - and then get to go next, in addition. And of course, you have the "everyone flips" card - which almost always results in a duel. These cards are low in number but always have the potential to get you grabbing the stick even if no one has flipped a match for you.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it's really damn satisfying to grab that stick. It's rubbery but firm and has enough groves on it so that it fits your hand really well. The tiebreaker rules are fair - most fingers on the stick wins. And of course, there's an excellent rule that knocking the stick off the table results in your getting everyone's cards.

If I have any complaints, I might start with the fact that eight different people have to be able to reach one object. Physically, that can be challenging, though seating the the longest-armed furthest can work out nicely. Unrelated is perhaps the biggest factor in who wins: if you sit to the left of the worst player, then you'll be getting to put out free cards a lot, as the loser of a duel starts playing. It's a tough flaw to overcome without house rules on who starts a round, or rearranging seats.

Future - I'm not exactly clamoring to get Jungle Speed to the table, but with a sufficiently competitive crowd, I'd like to see it again. I've never had a bad time with it, even if the heart doesn't ache for it.

Bonus question - What is your favorite dexterity and/or pattern recognition game?

Hint for #22 - distillation of one of my favorite player interaction mechanics
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness