Jumanji: Wild Adventures from Outright Games, Cradle Games, and Columbia Pictures is an adventure set in the world of Jumanji based on the recent movies. Check our Jumanji: Wild Adventures review!

Drop into the dangerous game world of Jumanji and start a thrilling adventure, as you search for the stolen jewel, The Jaguar’s Eye, and a way home!

Choose your avatar from heroes Smolder Bravestone, Ruby Roundhouse, Mouse Finbar, and Shelly Oberon, and explore uncharted territories home to fierce predators, warring factions and devious traps that can sweep you off your feet. Survive the jungle to reach new zones including forgotten villages, icy mountains, dark caves, and fetid swamps. And always be ready for new threats, because the Jumanji drums could strike at any moment!

Jumanji: Wild Adventures is the newest release in the Jumanji video games franchise and a sequel to Jumanji The Video Game that released in 2021. This one is from from Outright Games, developerCradle Games and Columbia Pictures. Follow your choice of character from Dr. Smolder Bravestone, Ruby Roundhouse, Franklin “Mouse” Finbar, and Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon in this new adventure that will take them to new regions within the Jumanji world.

Jumanji: Wild Adventures is exactly the kind of game I have in mind when I think of a video game based on a movie based on a board game. You’ll explore different regions of the surprisingly big world of this Jumanji game. After a great-looking albeit short opening cutscene, you’ll immediately be drawn into the action and will explore a level in the jungle sub-world. Your objective is to recover the stolen jewel known as The Jaguar’s Eye in order to save the world of Jumanji.

Once you begin a new level, you can choose the character you want to play and can change for the next level if you want to play with a different one. This is a co-op game that can be played offline with up to 4 players at once. I liked having the possibility of playing offline with my daughters and sometimes taking on more challenging segments on my own before having them rejoin the action in a bubble. Unfortunately, the camera is working against you and mainly focuses on the first player, which is odd for a co-op experience. The other players will often fall out of view. I would have liked the camera to be similar to, say, a LEGO game where the other players can move away, and the camera zooms out until they’re too far apart and then centers back on each of them.

I liked the level design of the different explorable worlds. You’ll begin in a lush jungle, then move to a pirate-themed world. Then there’s a mercenary world and another one with native people. There are a lot of details in the levels and even a little variety as the gameplay sometimes changes to a sliding mini-game, which was fun to play out. Even if they aren’t photo-realistic, the levels of this game seem to lack optimization as the framerate generally stays under a solid fluidity level and is even choppy at times. The game tries to run at 60 frames per second, as we can see on the world map, where it is able to reach this but usually stays below 30 fps.

Each level has letters for the word JUMANJI hidden, and finding them will give you some perks down the line. You’ll also unlock specific characters’ weapons that are usable by pressing the R2 button. My favorite one was Dr. Bravestone’s, who has a boomerang that is a neat ranged weapon with target locking. Ruby has a halberd that is powerful but slightly harder to maneuver. On the difficulty side, at Normal, I thought that the difficulty was correctly balanced, although slightly on the hard side, mainly because the levels are so big and you must reach the end without losing all your heart containers. Luckily, in Normal, if you get a Game Over, you can restart from the last checkpoint reached.

I already mentioned a few issues I had with the game, namely the camera in offline multiplayer that focuses on following the main character, and the unstable framerate on PlayStation 5. I also noticed that the enemy AI was a bit odd. They usually just rush at you, but if you’re on a slightly lower platform than them, they won’t notice you, even if you are in their field of view. The game also crashed on me once when I was trying to get out of a level and back into the world map, so hopefully those are issues the developer can fix with a patch.

On the presentation side, I liked exploring the world and thought the levels were beautiful with a cartoony look. The orchestrated background soundtrack was also nice to listen to, and my daughter – whom I played in offline multiplayer with – liked it. There are a few different languages available, and voice acting is also included, which is something we do not see often.

On the trophies side, there are 41 trophies that can be found in this title, as well as a Platinum trophy. The list is split into 21 Bronze trophies, 18 Silver trophies, and 2 Gold trophies. A chunk of them will unlock as you progress through the game and beat the different bosses. A few others are tied to the collectibles and require you to find all of the JUMANJI letters and upgrade the character’s weapons. The game is Cross-Buy between the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, and, as is usually the case, they each have separate trophy lists, so if you have a PS5, you can try to double Platinum this one!

Jumanji: Wild Adventures is a great adventure set in the world of Jumanji, based on the recent movies. I liked exploring the different worlds and was surprised by how big the levels were. I did mention a few issues with the camera in offline multiplayer that follows the main character and by the framerate that usually can’t stay at even 30 frames per second. All in all, it’s still a fun game that is easy to recommend. Jumanji: Wild Adventures is available as a Cross-Buy title, so your $39.99 purchase will allow you to download both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions of the game at no extra cost.

Disclaimer
This Jumanji: Wild Adventures review is based on a PlayStation copy provided by Outright Games.