Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure is a real-time cooperative game for 2-4 players, Ages 8+ and lasting about 45 minutes. I pre-ordered my copy online from Target back in January when I first heard about: A cooperative Indiana Jones game? Count me in!

So, this arrived at my house June 18th, 2023 at about 1:30pm. I know the date and time because I had invited a friend over to play the game with me at noon, and it still hadn’t arrived! While we were waiting, we played through Bogeyman: a cooperative kind of horror game by Antoine Ferrara (we’ll take a look at this in the future). It finally arrived! Let’s take a look!

Components and Gameplay

This is a smaller size box from Funko games. It’s about the size of Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game from a few weeks ago. This size makes sense: the cooperative games from Target all seem to be about the same size. I believe, at the time of this writing, that this is currently a Target exclusive game.

There is a major toy factor going on here in the timet! The timer is actually a fairly complicated structure!

The timer structure has to be assembled, see above. It is supposed to swing upside down as you fill the bucket on top with gems:

This is the main centerpiece of the game and it looks amazing on the table!

There are two parts to the game: the gather phase (which is not real-time) and the fight phase (which is real-time!). During the gather phase, you are trying to build up your hand to fight the bad guys. To win: you have to defeat all three bad guys over 3 rounds of gather/fight.

Each bad guy has an ever-increasing number of hit points! You don’t have to take out the first two to win, but not defeating the first two bad guys puts you at a disadvantage on the the next round: you DO have to defeat Rene Belloq to win!

Each player takes the role of an iconic Indiana Jones character, with a special power! See the 4 choices above!

On their turn during the gather phase, players move to any location on a track of five: see above; once they take the action there, they have to roll a dice to see the “consequences”.

Generally the consequences are losing cards or putting a gem into the timer tower!

As players “gather”, they are collecting cards with symbols and colors and “fight”: see above. The cards are like UNO cards in many ways, because you can only play a card on the deck if you match the current top symbol or color!

The only way to win to to play enough “fight” cards (see the character cards above) to knock out the current bad guy, but you can only play those “fight” cards if you can match the card on top (symbol or color).

Once you have played too many gems, the timer tower will flip! See above! That’s when the real-time phase starts! This part of the game reminded us of Escape: Curse of the Temple! You are trying to play fight cards and draw cards as fast as possible, but if you ever draw a SNAKE card, you have to roll the red dice until you defeat the snake!

The real-time phase is furious! You are trying to play fight cards as fast as you can to knock out the bad guy! If you do before the time runs out, you move on to the next gather/fight round!

This is a really great production!  That timer tower is really cool to see in action!

 

Movie Arc

This game really felt like it had a movie arc: as you playing in the “gather” phase, it felt like you were trying to gather information about the bad guy, occassionally hurting him, but making the final fight inevitable! Once the timer tower flips, it feels like the battle at the endof the movie has started! It’s furious! It’s crazy! It’s fun!

The game really does feel like an action movie.

Replayability

Our major concern for this game is replayability: there are only 3 villains and you fight the same three every time. Also, the locations are a little limited: they do have an A and B side AND you get to change one of them every round, but a few more villains or locations might have helped this game. We enjoyed the game, but you play the same three rounds every time: gather/fight, gather/fight, gather/fight.

Other Thoughts

This game looks great on the table, If you have this set-up, I’ll bet a bunch of people will stop by! It’s very appealing visually!

The rulebook was pretty good: we read the rulebook as a team, and we got going on the game pretty quickly. It had a big font, was easy to read, and enough good pictures (including set-up).

You may want to consider sleeving your cards: you touch them a lot, and you handle them a lot during the sweaty, grody, real-time phase. The cards aren’t linen-finished, so they will grody faster.

The Lost Arc of the Covenant In The Room

So, if you like real-time, you will probably like this.  If you don’t tend to like real-time … you may still like this.  The real-time phase is easy to teach and easy to play: it’s frantic without too much annoying freneticism.  I personally don’t tend to like real-time games, but I like this.

 

 

Conclusion

Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure was a surprisingly fun real-time game, and I don’t like real-time games generally. The game felt you were in a movie:the gather phase feeling you were gathering information and resources, but knowing that a big battle was coming … you just didn’t know when! When that timer flips, it’s an adrenaline rush!

The game looks fantastic on the table, and the toy factor of the timer tower cannot be denied! You will want to play this just to see the tower! And it will attract others to you .. “What is that you are playing?”

The cards could be better (you may want to sleeve them), but the biggest concern is the replayability! Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure was a blast to play, and we had fun, but the game is pretty much the same game every time with the same three villains and the same game arc. It might have been nice had there been a few more scenarios (find the arc, find the crystal skull) to vary the game.

Your first play is so dynamic and fun, you might give it an 8.5/10 out of the gate because it’s so quick and fun and cool! You will probably calm a little and drop it to a 7/10 or less after a while just because the game arc doesn’t change.

I’m glad I got this: I will be pulling it out at RichieCon 2023 and introducing to everyone I can! This feels like a perfect convention game!