A new four-player cooperative game based on the latest Jumanji films has been revealed and is scheduled for release later this year.

Jumanji: Wild Adventures has just been announced, with a relatively close release date. The most recent related game was Jumanji: The Video Game, released in 2019. It was a third-person co-op game based on the two reboot movies. Although it received a PS5 update in 2021, it flew largely under the radar as an essential movie supplement.

After the original 1995 blockbuster starring Robin Williams, Jumanji became a bigger blockbuster franchise in the modern era with two sequels, 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and 2019’s Jumanji: The Next Level.

Hollywood stars Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Karen Gillian and Kevin Hart have become the faces of the franchise. As a result, the series has gained new recognition in the popular mainstream cinema zeitgeist over the past few years.

Fans of the films will be pleased to learn that a new trailer has been released for the cooperative game Wild Adventures, due out on 3 November. The short trailer features the new movie characters jumping, running and fighting in the jungle and snowy environments. Jumanji: Wild Adventures is strangely different for the studio behind it, as Cradle Games are developing the game. They’re the studio responsible for the Souls-inspired sci-fi action-RPG Hellpoint, released in 2020.

Wild Adventures seems to offer a lot of variety in terms of gameplay. The trailer shows moments where characters flee from lava or spiders towards the screen a la Crash Bandicoot. Other moments look like a 2D platformer or an arcade-style top-down beat-em-up. It’s not known whether Wild Adventures will be playable solo. Part of the 38-second trailer is devoted to showing individual characters running around the screen and fleeing from enemies.

It seems odd that a cooperative Jumanji game like Wild Adventures would be released in 2023 without a feature film behind it.

It’s been over three years since the last movie. A fourth film is rumoured to be in the works. With both Welcome to the Jungle and The Next Level being released in December in their respective years, the November release date for Wild Adventures may indicate that the next unannounced Jumanji movie will also target this holiday season. If this is true, the announcement of the film should happen soon. After all, it’s already June, and big Hollywood blockbusters almost always have a long marketing run-up.

Source: YouTube