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If you’ve ever thought that building your own board game would be easy you might want to think again. The bar has been set to astronomical heights after Steven Richter, a Suffolk-born artist, constructed a model replica of the Jumanji board game over the course of seven months, and captured it all in a time-lapse video that’s worth watching from start to finish.
The board, which would make even Alan Parrish double-take, is kitted out with tiny super magnets, embedded into the box itself, to give the playing pieces a supernatural attraction to the board. Steven Richter shows off an astounding level of craftsmanship in the video: working not only with saws and sanding blocks, but clay sculpting, resin casting, screen printing, and hand-painting his designs.
The end product looks not only like something you might stumble over on a movie set, but like a game that really could survive being buried for a couple hundred years to keep away from innocent victims.
It’s admirable how dedicated Steven is to replicating the box seen in the 1995 Jumanji film, all down to the finest of details. That said, if you think you have what it takes to build your own you might want to consider that Steven works professionally on movie prop restoration.
However it’s hard not to take inspiration from such a brilliant project; you can get hold of all the mould castings used in the video for the board cover and pathways, as well as Jumanji playing pieces, on Steven’s Etsy page, and various invented rules can be found online if you want to play Jumanji but don't have a demon portal handy.
We’re sure we’ll be seeing a lot more Jumanji fan projects in the run up to the new movie, Welcome to the Jungle, releasing this December starring Dwayne ‘The Rock‘ Johnson and Karen Gillan. However, if you were expecting a reprisal of the classic Jumanji game you’ll be disappointed to hear that the newest movie will be trading in its board game box for a digital 90’s-era video game that sucks teenagers into the bodies of their avatar. There are certainly changes on the horizon, which to me makes this tribute to the movie classic all the more touchingly nostalgic.
Of course, we’re still looking forward to seeing Jumanji in the headlines again, and in the mean time we’d love to hear about any board game builds you’ve been working on whether it’s upgrading some print-and-plays or designing your own boxes.
Either way I can say for sure that I wouldn’t want to be within 10 feet of Steven’s Jumanji set! Check out some images of this amazing replica below. Credit goes to Steven Richter.
