Base price: $17.95.
1 – 4 players.
Play time: 20 minutes.
BGG | Board Game Atlas
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 1

Full disclosure: A review copy of EXIT Kids: Jungle of Riddles was provided by Thames & Kosmos.

It’s always kind of weird and fun, as a childless man, to be reviewing a kid’s game. On one hand, I kind of just play it with my standard group and we take the whole thing in stride, but on the other hand, I do owe it to the game to treat it critically. That means it’s going to hit differently than, say, burncycle, as they’re targeted to different audiences. How does a game meet the needs of its specific audience? Where does it do well? Where does it fall short? Is it limited to its specific audience, or is it approachable enough for a varied audience? These are things I’m trying to think about, which is probably taking a game for 5 and up a bit seriously, but hey, you’re reading it, so hopefully it works. We’ll see. Either way, let’s jump into EXIT Kids: Jungle of Riddles, and see what’s up!

In EXIT Kids: Jungle of Riddles, you’ve found nine treasure chests on a mysterious and unknown island! As you’ve done so, you realize you’re not alone: many different animals are there and they’ve created puzzles to test your skills! They’re friendly, though, so the puzzles aren’t dangerous. They’re just puzzles for fun. The more you answer, the more treasure you’ll get, so do your best! How many golden keys will you be able to obtain?

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

Shuffle up the Treasure Chest tokens, setting them out. Also, set aside the key tokens. The Answer Disk goes in the center of the play area:

Then, shuffle each of the six decks of cards, and then draw one of each (keeping them face-down). You should be ready to start!

Gameplay

EXIT Kids: The Jungle of Riddles is an interesting variant on the other EXIT games, since it’s targeted at a younger audience. Here, there’s no reading required to solve any of the puzzles. It’s also completely modular and replayable, which is cool.

Your goal is to solve all six riddles to try and earn keys to unlock treasure chests! Each riddle is a different type:

• Pink: Which animals’ shadows combine to make the shape on the card?
• Red: Which animals are on the map between the start and finish of the trail?
• Blue: Which animals don’t appear on the card?
• Purple: Which three animals appear within the boundaries of the magnifying glass?
• Yellow: Which animals aren’t hidden by the leaves?
• Orange: Which three animals are wearing the pictured hat? This one’s my favorite.

As you attempt to solve a riddle, align the three animals in the Answer Disk under the color and symbol of the riddle, then flip the disk over. If it shows an X, you’re incorrect! If it shows a key, you can place it on one of the treasure chests!

Once you’ve solved all six riddles, you’re done! Flip over the treasure chests with keys on them and see what treasures you’ve earned! You can replace the riddle cards and try again with a new set of six when you want to play again!

Player Count Differences

I, granted, have not tried this game with a bunch of kids, so I can’t necessarily say how it would play with more kids, but we found that the game played fine within my standard play group. We usually play these games with two people, and that’s been our standard EXIT group for … years. With the Jungle of Riddles, we can pretty much take on any riddle as a team. I feel like with more than two, however, there wouldn’t be much for us to do. We could split the puzzles up, but at that point, I’d just as soon split into teams and tackle the game in pairs. The game doesn’t take that long to play. Could probably do just fine with a solo game, but I’m not 100% sure how it would play for just one kid, either. Either way, two players was fine for my group.

Strategy

• Are you reading a set of strategies for a children’s game with no reading ability required? You’ve come to an odd section of this review, but I’m happy to indulge you. I would strongly recommend reading the instructions for each of the puzzles, if reading is your thing; they often rule out a few things that might otherwise be confusing.
• You can safely rule out animals on the same level of the disk. Your answer can’t include two animals on the same level of the disk (since it has to be one animal per level), so if you’re getting an answer that definitely requires both, it’s probably not right. Which one (if either) is correct? Well, that’s a question you’ll have to solve.
• Go slow and be methodical! There’s no reason to rush any of these, and rushing them will generally lead to mistakes. So take your time! There’s no hurry.
• You’ll almost certainly need to rotate leaves for the yellow riddle. Your first guess might be right as to where the leaves go, but I’d be impressed. Just make sure you’re considering that you might have to spin the leaves around since they have four possible configurations, each.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• A very cute and approachable theme. Who doesn’t love a jungle full of animal friends? They even brought back the dodo, which is impressive. Good for them. But yeah, I can see kids getting on board with this theme. It’s definitely bright, colorful, and engaging, which are all things I look for.
• Animals with hats are a delight. There are a lot of animals in hats! There’s an entire puzzle on the subject! The choice of hats is also pleasant and varied.
• There’s a nice variety of puzzles here. They have challenges all over the place, from finding animals to tracing a map to identifying shadows to figuring out who’s missing; it’s a good variety that kids should find pretty entertaining.
• I’m interested in how they managed to nail the puzzles without requiring any reading ability. It’s really impressive! The puzzles are all shadows and maps and matching and things that are, on their own, gently challenging, but to level the playing field by knocking out reading as a requirement is very impressive, for a game with this audience. To make it modular as well is further impressive. Just a really neat construction all around.
• The end of game treasures are fun. In the interest of not spoiling anything, I won’t tell you what’s in the chests, but they’re definitely things I would want, for the most part. At least one of them I’m neutral at best on.
• The large format cards are nice, too. I’m always here for bigger cards.
• Replayable! A replayable EXIT game. It’s a really nice thing to see, and I really like how they implemented it. You can come back and try the puzzles again and again until you’ve memorized the solution for a number, if you want. Who knows? Either way, you can pass it along once you’re done, as well.
• It’s also much faster to play. A full game takes about 20 minutes, which is nice. I suppose you could go through every puzzle (six runs of six different puzzles) in about two hours, if you’re looking for the “full EXIT experience”, but honestly, it’s nice to just do one and take a break for a bit.

Mehs

• Not much in the way of a plot with this one, but that’s also unsurprising given the game’s emphasis on avoiding reading. You can’t really have it both ways. If you want cute animal friends and more of a plot, I’d recommend going for EXIT: The Enchanted Forest. You gotta make trade-offs, and I think losing an overarching narrative is fine for increasing the approachability of the game.

Cons

• I wonder a bit how the lower-quality and small components will hold up to repeated use and wear from kids. I worry that the small cardboard stuff is going to get torn apart or not hold up to wear over time with younger players (or even older players). I haven’t really seen how long EXIT components last since we don’t typically reuse them. HABA addresses this issue with wooden components (even for the keys in their The Key series), but I worry that would just drive the price up for the EXIT games (their < $20 price point is usually part of the draw).

Overall: 9 / 10

Overall, I think EXIT Kids: Jungle of Riddles is pretty fantastic! It has a lot in common with the modularity that I saw in HABA’s The Key series, but they do a really good job making this game cooperative and not having a reading requirement. Frankly, that’s what I’m most impressed by: the standard EXIT games have tons of writing to set up puzzles and provide hints and clues, but Jungle of Riddles has none of that. It just relies on pictures and lets kids just kinda go at it. I also appreciate the dynamic replayability of it. While it only has six types of puzzles, providing several examples of each puzzle and letting kids mix them together makes for a short puzzle experience that can be done over and over and over. Maybe at some point someone starts to remember the solution to a specific card, and in that case, you just pass it along to someone new! It’s a very well-designed product, in that way. I would have liked to see the game go more of the HABA route in terms of components, however. The standard EXIT component quality is fairly low (no complaints; you gotta hit that price point) and kids tend to be a little more punishing with game components. I wonder how many plays the various cardboard pieces will survive. For me, I mildly miss the lack of a cohesive narrative connecting the puzzles, but it’s hard not to be charmed by the fun art and bright colors, to say nothing of the approachability of the game. I was thoroughly impressed by EXIT Kids: Jungle of Riddles, and if you’re looking for a puzzle for the whole family, you love animals, or you just hate reading, you might enjoy checking it out!

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