Jungle Speed review

Jungle Speed is based on a board game, which may or may not be popular but we’d never heard of it, and supports up to eight players thanks to a neat control system where two people can share a remote and Nunchuk. The rules of the game are pretty simple: players are dealt their cards face down and then take it in turns to flip a card over using the A button on the remote or flicking up on the Nunchuk stick.

When two cards of the same design appear, it’s a race between the two players with those cards to grab a ‘totem’ from the middle of the board, done with a waggle of the remote or Nunchuk. Whoever loses the duel gets all the cards from the winner’s pile. The ultimate winner is the person who gets rid of all their cards first, so it’s all down to fast reactions without cocking it up.

There are special cards that add an extra dimension – a ‘fastest grab’ card, for example, where everyone races to swipe the totem. And there are penalties for messing things up. You’ll have to take all the cards on the board if you grab the totem when the cards don’t match – a frequent occurrence if you use the extended deck that has dozens of slightly different designs.

It’s good, hectic fun if there’s a group of you playing and has that unquantifiable ‘just one more go’ quality. Predictably, it’s less fun if you play alone against the AI. The presentation is bright and friendly without being spectacular, and we like the animal avatars, especially the blue rhino, who we think might be Rocksteady moonlighting from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Apr 22, 2009