Jumbulaya game

Since letters can only be added, traded and rearranged on the board, the more letters that there are to work with the harder it is to change a word into a new word. While it would be really easy to claim a bunch of short words, the short words provide little protection.

This creates an interesting dynamic where you want to take control of more rows while also increasing the length of your own words in order to better protect them. One problem that I have always had with the word game genre is that it tends to have a problem with analysis paralysis. If players are given unlimited amounts of time to choose their word for a round, the game can drag on for far too long.

Due to being able to add, trade and shuffle tiles in Jumbulaya there are many potential options which could take players forever to go through. While Jumbulaya does some good things to combat analysis paralysis, it also makes the problem worse in other ways. Lets start with where I think Jumbulaya gets rid of some of the analysis paralysis problems. This would have created an options overload for players that always need to try to find the best option.

Although limiting the number of tiles you can use on a turn somewhat reduces the analysis paralysis problem, the issue is far from eliminated in Jumbulaya.

Being able to add and trade tiles with the tiles in your tile rack along with being able to rearrange tiles on the board leads to so many potential options in the game. Especially later in the game there are so many different possibilities using those three actions that it can be truly overwhelming. To keep the game from being dragged down you really need to implement some sort of house rule that limits how much time a player can spend on their turn thinking of words. Otherwise the game could quickly run into issues as players have to sit around waiting for a player to figure out what they want to do.

Other than the analysis paralysis problem, I think the biggest problem that I had with Jumbulaya is that it is just a boring board game. You draw and play tiles just like in games like Scrabble. The game just felt like every other word game that I have played in the past. There are some analysis paralysis issues but every word game has the same issues.

Jumbulaya has some interesting tweaks to the formula which add some interesting things to the game. While the game has some interesting mechanics, it just feels like every other word game that has ever been released.

Not being a huge fan of word games to begin with, this made Jumbulaya a pretty boring board game. If you already have a lot of word games, Jumbulaya is probably not unique enough to warrant a purchase. If you would like to purchase Jumbulaya you can find it online: Amazon , eBay. Board Games Family Reviews Word. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Comment Name Email Website.

Turns: Each turn, you can manipulate the tiles in ONE row to form a word. The new word must: be a valid scrabble word. In other words, you may rearrange the letters any way you want, and take unused letters into your rack, subject to the restrictions above. The number of letters in the word does not matter, only the number of tiles used to form the word. You may play a word on a line you already own.

Mark the new word as owned by with your color marker. Dictionary: Crosswords uses a dictionary derived from the open source program Collins Zyzzyv a, which has roughly , words considered acceptable for scrabble. A smaller, ordered set of roughly 38, words, is considered common enough for general use. Robots: the robots are simple "hill climbing" robots, that find the best of immediately available words, but that is very effective when armed with the complete dictionary.

Weaker bots restrict the vocabulary, but are still challenging. A Sad Note: Jumbulaya is commercially extinct, but you can still find copies on ebay from time to time.