Category: Player vs player Key mechanics: Pattern-recognition, dexterity, real-time Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1 Game length: 15-20 minutes First played: 2015 Experience: 15-25 plays with 5-8 players
In Jungle Speed, each player has a facedown deck of square cards that each have a pattern printed in a specific color. On your turn, you flip over your top facedown card onto you faceup pile so everyone can see. If it matches someone else's someone else's faceup card, then the two of you "duel" - grabbing a center totem. The loser of the duel takes both participants' faceup piles and adds them to their facedown deck, and play resumes. Grab the totem incorrectly or knock the totem over and take a penalty of cards. Run out of cards and you win.
When it comes down to it, sometimes all you want to do is fight over a stick like dogs over a bone.
The totem that you fight over in Jungle Speed is great. It's soft and firm and rubbery and ridged and it stands up nicely and it's not a perfect cylinder. I bring these things up because of course, you will be trying to grab the totem very often throughout the game. It's thus incredibly important that it be fun to grab, and I can confirm that yes, indeed, it is. There's also a great rule that in case of near-simultaneous grabs, the winner is the player with the most fingers directly touching the totem; i.e. if you get an partial grip or your fingers are on top of your opponent's, then that will inform the winner of the duel. The totem is not responsible for the (admittedly possible) scratching! Cut your nails, folks!
Of course, any speed game like this will get the blood pumping fast. In some ways Jungle Speed works like a microgame, since each battle is contested over the flip of a single card. But because your card stays open and you never know when someone will flip your card, to me, it feels like the arc develops over the course of the game..And getting on a streak, watching other people contest the totem, and diving in when special cards flip (everyone race for the center; everyone flip a simultaneous card; match colors instead of numbers) is always fun as well.
I don't think Jungle Speed is particularly worth playing with fewer than five players, and it's not exactly a "crunchy" experience. But in within its own genre of semi-party games it performs great.