With the fifth (and theoretically final) Indiana Jones movie arriving in theaters this Friday, there’s been an avalanche of new merchandise tied in with Lucasfilm’s adventurous franchise, including the new board game “Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure” from Funko Games.
I received a copy of “Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure” for review and finally had a chance to sit down and play it with friends over the weekend. This game is entirely inspired by the first Indiana Jones film, 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, and only features characters and locations from that movie, so don’t expect any Temples of Doom or Holy Grails to pop up during the gameplay. There are four characters to choose from, which was perfect because we had a party of four people to play yesterday: Indiana Jones himself, Marion Ravenwood, Sallah, and Marcus Brody (the latter of which doesn’t actually join Indy on his globe-trotting adventure in Raiders, but it’s fun to imagine that he did instead of staying back in the States, so I’ll forgive the embellishment). There are also three villains from the movie for our heroes to go up against: Colonel Dietrich, Major Arnold Toht, and Rene Belloq.
The object of the game is essentially the same as Indy’s goal in Raiders: prevent the villains from taking possession of the Ark of the Covenant, and the process of doing so is divided into two phases: exploration and combat. The exploration phase allows players to move their character tokens to various familiar spots from the film, like the Cairo marketplace, the Tanis dig site, the Map Room, and the Well of Souls, where they carry out actions that will affect their hand of cards. The cards are then utilized in the second phase, which is activated when the very neat-looking sand timer flips over thanks to the attached basket being filled with gems. Visually and kinetically this is certainly one of the neatest parts of the game, and there’s also quite a bit of tension as the tiles instruct players to add gems to the basket, causing its top-heavy weight to teeter ever closer to flipping over. Then the scramble to defeat the enemy begins, with players basically engaging in a super-high-speed game of cooperative “Uno” as they try to match the colors and symbols on each other’s cards to inflict damage on one of the three villains.
My only real issue with this game is that my brain does not move fast enough to keep up with the rapid-fire card placement once the combat phase begins. My friends and my wife, who are all smarter and quicker than I am, were made to shout instructions at me for which cards to play next and which dice to roll, but only because I was moving too slowly and as a team you’re always working against that sand timer. That issue with my own quick-thinking shortcomings aside, I could see “Sands of Adventure” being a really fun and very exciting game for families who are into Indiana Jones as a franchise, and Raiders of the Lost Ark specifically as a movie. It doesn’t take a tremendous amount of time to set up or learn, and once you do the action is pretty much non-stop. Personally, I’m more into games that lean toward the exploration side of things more heavily than the fighting, and as implied above I would vastly prefer to have time to choose my next move, but I will say that the design and (especially) the artwork on display here was enough to keep me entertained and amused as an Indy enthusiast.
“Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure” is available now from Target.
