Jurassic Park III Island Survival Game

Jurassic Park III Island Survival relies on chance more than some hardcore gamers would prefer, but if you enjoy the dinosaur theme -- or, more importantly, if your children (recommended for ages 8 and up) enjoy the dinosaur theme -- this game is worth owning.

Pros

Cons

Jurassic Park III Island Survival comes with 12 cool little plastic dinosaurs (2 Spinosaurus, 1 Tyrannosaurus Rex, 3 Velociraptors, 6 Pterandons), a bunch of cardboard pieces (player tokens and life chips for each character), four dice, 30 cards, and an oversized gameboard.

The game plays with 2 to 4 players, with each variation having its own initial setup. There are seven human characters in the game (Eric jumps in partway through), and they all compete to make it across the board alive.

One player is the dinosaurs, all other players are human. Play begins with a human, followed by the dinosaur. Then another human moves, then the dinosaur again. (So the dinoaur player takes every other turn.)

The dinosaurs and players begin in pre-determined locations; the dinosaurs also (with few exceptions caused by card play) are limited to moving around certain regions of the board. Movement is controlled by dice, as are confrontations between the players and the dinosaurs. During a confrontation, a player has a 50 percent chance of escaping. If he doesn't escape, one or more of his life tokens are taken away. The Spinosaurus is the most dangerous dinosaur, because with the right die roll it can kill a human no matter how many life chips that human has remaining.

The first character to make it safely across the board to the beach and draw the "win" card wins. The dinosaur player wins by eating all the humans.