Jamaica is a gorgeous, easy to play, family-friendly racing game that is also really, really bad. Its microscopic decision space, inconsistent theming, and complete lack of player agency make it very difficult to suffer through. You’d think a game about tearing a path through the Caribbean in a pirate ship would be at least mildly exciting. Think again. This game is boring. Its age rating may be 8+, but I’d say just 8 might be more accurate.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Jamaica‘s production is phenomenal. The board is beautiful, the art is ebullient, and the components are outstanding. The single exception is the rulebook. Jamaica‘s rulebook can go fudge itself. I hate it. Whoever thought unfolding a rulebook like it’s a gosh dang treasure map wouldn’t get old is an imbecile. It gets one point for novelty and loses a hundred for utility. Not a good trade-off. I have never felt more ridiculous looking for the answer to a mid-game rules question, as amusing as I’m sure my vexation was to the other players. Note to y’all game publishers out there: don’t get cute with your rulebooks.
Anyhow, as previously stated Jamaica is a racing game. Players who cross the finish line by the end score the full amount of points for the race, and the others are scored on how close they were to finishing. Additional points are awarded for amassed gold and treasure, so you can actually win the game even if you don’t finish the race. Seems weird, but okay. Each turn, the starting player rolls two dice and assigns one to the Morning slot and the other to the Evening slot. Then, players simultaneously select a card from their hands of 3 which specifies the actions they’re taking for each time of day. There are 2 types of actions: movement and resource gathering. Movement actions move you forward or backward the number of spaces on the corresponding Morning/Evening die. Resource gathering actions earn you an amount of gold, food, or ammunition based on the same thing. Selected actions are resolved beginning with the start player then going clockwise around the table.
Moving your ship through Jamaica‘s waters almost always results in some sort of additional effect. Most spaces have fines of either food or gold that must be paid to stop there, lest you be penalized and forced backward on the map. Other spaces are more helpful and earn you treasure. On top of these effects, ending your movement in the same space as another player’s ship also initiates combat with them. Oooh, combat! Don’t get excited. Combat in Jamaica is simple, quick, and mind-numbing. The attacker spends any amount of ammunition tokens they desire then adds a die roll to get their combat value. The defender does the same and the higher number wins, getting the treasure or resources of their choosing from their defeated opponent. Yes, it’s basic and yes, it’s inconsequential.
As far as the resource gathering goes, anything you earn has be stored in one of your ship’s five holds. Complicating this, newly acquired resources must always be added to an empty hold, so if all five are full — even with just a SINGLE token — you must clear one out to make room. I find this system nonsensical. I understand the designers needed to make the resource management a bit more of a puzzle so the game didn’t feel even more mindless, but this is a really poor solution. It makes no thematic sense whatsoever. I can’t move cargo between holds? I can’t store my freshly earned gold with the gold I already have? Why? Rules like this that defy all natural logic have turned many a design into an unintuitive clunker and should be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately, this isn’t Jamaica‘s only example of extreme mechanical/thematic disconnect either. Here’s another: since you MUST move the exact number on the corresponding die during a movement action, the game encourages silly behaviors like purposefully shooting past a piece of treasure to land on space with a cost you can’t afford so you can get penalized and retreat back to the treasure space. Ugh. These are not minor oddities, these are abstract mechanics lazily propped up by thematic pretense.
Even such, these are just nitpicks compared to the game’s worst issue: its cramped and suffocating decision space. You have a hand limit of 3 cards in Jamaica, and a single card dictates your ENTIRE turn. That means that all you do the whole game is decide which of three cards to play on your turn then do what the card tells you. If you are the starting player for the round, your turn is slightly more interesting because you get to choose the order of the Morning/Evening dice, but even still, Jamaica is one of the most player limiting modern board games I have ever endured. There is no room for skillful play at all. If you can count spaces on a board and do 2nd-grade arithmetic you will be on equal terms with everyone else. The only thing you can do in the game that even resembles planning ahead is to keep a decent stockpile of ammunition in case combat breaks out, but even then everything is so far out of your control it’s totally meaningless. You can’t even decide to attack someone; it just happens if you somehow end your movement in the same space as them, which is more likely to happen by chance than it is by intent. I am getting bored just thinking about this.
I understand that this game is intended for 8 year-olds, but guess what? I played Super Mario 64 when I was 8 and that game’s a masterpiece! The controls are intuitive, the levels are fun to explore, the music is fantastic, and there is a ton of challenging content to keep you coming back. It may seem a bit daft to be comparing Jamaica to a video game, but my point is this: entertainment products intended for children and families don’t have to be bad; they just have to appeal to a sensibility children and adults share. Can’t Stop is a perfect example; pressing your luck is fun for people of any age. Jenga is another; there is a universal appeal to trying to get a tower of wooden blocks as high as you can get it before it collapses. I’m sorry but selecting the least bad option from a set of three for 45 minutes does not make the list, and that’s exactly what the experience of Jamaica boils down to when all is said and done.
Jamaica gets a rating of TWO out of FIVE, indicating it is NOT RECOMMENDED.