Jurassic World: The Legacy of Isla Nublar

Today is the day we evacuated Isla Nublar. But, the adventure isn’t yet over.

We don’t do game night every week, and even then, we alternate between the core group of me, my boyfriend, and my two kids, and at my daughter’s house, where we play with her husband and occasionally one of my sisters if they’re in the area.

So we have been working on the Jurassic World: The Legacy of Isla Nublar board game campaign for a very long time. It’s not the first campaign/legacy game we’ve played; we have Gloomhaven, Jaws of the Lion and Skyrim under our belts. But since the pandemic hit, we’ve had to take breaks, sometimes long breaks, and we still haven’t gotten back to the rhythm we once had.

(I just looked and I don’t think I have ever written about this game…)

The earliest game night picture that showed the board game was March 2nd. So it’s been more than five months since we started. It was called Jurassic Park back then. There was some running and screaming, some deaths, and they closed the park. They reopened it as Jurassic World, and we got a new sticker to put on the board.

I should back up a bit. Jurassic World is a campaign game — you play scenarios to progress through the game, each one packed in its own envelope. It is also a legacy game — during the gameplay, you modify the boards and cards with permanent stickers. Jurassic World, like other legacy board games, can only be played once. The instructions actually direct players to tear up certain cards, though I really doubt anyone does.

Each scenario starts with making permanent changes to the game board, with non-removable stickers. Players build roads, barriers, electric fences, monorails, helipads, the list goes on. I mentioned each scenario comes in a sealed envelope. Those envelopes contain new cards, new rules, a little comic explaining the scenario, extra tokens in case some NPCs need to be carted around (usually tour groups, or little kids that manage to get themselves into trouble somehow). The characters you can play often change. Some characters are permanently retired, some only stick around for a scenario or two, some seem weirdly persistent.

About the only things you can depend upon, from scenario to scenario, are the dinos. We started out with a T-Rex, a velociraptor, a triceratops and a brachiosaurus. In almost every scenario, losing a dinosaur makes it nearly certain you will lose the scenario, and these dinos live dangerously. In tonight’s game, we’ve added a half dozen additional carnivores and a vegetarian stegosaurus, We also managed to turn the normally peaceful brachiosaurus into a carnivore with some illicit genetic engineering. Keeping all these dinos from eating each other is a constant struggle, as, inevitably, the power goes out in each scenario, setting the dinos free to rampage.

That might be enough for any other game. But in this one, we also have to shepherd tour groups around, man the gift shop, keep the genetics lab humming, making sure the park cameras can see what’s going on, do a daily mosasaur show, and, of course, try to keep the power on. In addition to these goals common to every scenario, you have five rounds of additional stuff that happens.

I was just warned not to make any spoilers here. Not really sure that I could. Decisions made in one scenario affect all future scenarios, and the game we’re playing is going to be very different from someone else’s game.

My boyfriend warned me because something pretty cinematic happened tonight, but… I’ll keep it to myself.

Tonight’s scenario had us all gathering at the helipad for evacuation, so I’m not sure who’s going to be still on the island next game. Maybe those mercenaries who invaded a few scenarios in will return. Who knows? And after that — the grand finale.

Should be fun.

HeroQuest is next.