“The Lost World” Board Game Celebrates Your Heavy Casualties
The Lost World Board Game might not offer much in the way of gameplay, but the presentation and 3D board do a pretty swell job.
The Lost World Board Game is a competitive and asymmetrical dice rolling game with point-to-point movement, and was released by Milton Bradley in 1996. The goal in The Lost World Jurassic Park Game is pretty much what you’d expect for a board game where one player is the humans and another player is the dinosaurs (Hint: There’s no diplomatic victory).
Overview
The human player begins with 12 human tokens. They all begin on the temple at the left side of the board on the image above. Their goal is to get a mere THREE people to the safety of the helipad on the right. Apparently 75% casualties are still enough to consider the mission a success. Maybe that’s why they felt okay to keep re-opening Jurassic Park.
The dinosaur’s goal is to eat at least 10 people, making victory impossible for the humans. The dino player has 4 Raptors and 1 T-Rex. The Raptors start on specifically noted spaces towards the right side of the board, while the T-Rex starts in a special location in the lower left.
Gameplay
Both player’s in The Lost World Board Game turn functions fairly similarly: roll dice.
The human player rolls both white dice, one of which is numbered from 2 through 4 with one side reading ‘Jump’, and the other die which is evenly split between ‘Stop’ and ‘Go’. The numbers indicate how far the player may move a human. If a ‘Go’ is rolled, the player rolls again, until they roll ‘Stop’, which ends their turn.
Likewise, the dino player rolls the black dice and the red die. The black dice functions like the white dice for the humans however ‘Jump’ is replaced with ‘Enter’. More on that later.
The red die moves the T-Rex 1 space or not at all.
Rather than roaming the board, the T-Rex has 10 spaces to move until it reaches the temple, the starting location for the humans. Once the T-Rex reaches the temple, all humans still hanging out there become an delightful amuse-bouche for our dino friend.
While the T-Rex does her whole “ripples in a cup of water” routine, the raptors and humans are running amok. Anytime a human moves onto a black diamond, they can move into (and then on top of) a building. If the building as a Jump noted on the roof, the human player can jump to the adjacent building (noted Land) by rolling the ‘Jump’ on the die. However, if the raptors move into a space with a explosion icon and roll ‘Enter’ they burst into the building, killing everyone inside. Very gruesome and horrific. Rated PG-13.
If the humans can get 3 of their own to safety before the dinos eat them all, they win!
Final Thoughts
I’m a sucker for asymmetrical gameplay. Admittedly, The Lost World Board Game doesn’t have much in the way of asymmetry, it’s something.
Plus, everyone secretly wants to be a dinosaur. Admit it.
What dinosaur would you want to be?
I’d want to be a liopleurodon. A magical liopleurodon.
