![A 'Jumanji' videogame is coming this year, one month before the third movie premieres. [Image source: PlayStation/YouTube/Screenshot]](https://staticr1.blastingcdn.com/media/photogallery/2019/6/6/660x290/b_502x220x82/a-jumanji-videogame-is-coming-this-year-one-month-before-the-third-movie-premieres-image-source-playstationyoutubescreenshot_2275023.jpg "A 'Jumanji' videogame is coming this year, one month before the third movie premieres. [Image source: PlayStation/YouTube/Screenshot]")
“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” the 2017 fantasy adventure comedy from Sony and Columbia Pictures, is not merely getting a follow-up premiering at the end of this year. It will also receive a video game adaptation, some two years after the source film arrived in cinemas.
It should be noted that “Welcome to the Jungle” is in itself a sequel to the original 1995 “Jumanji” movie starring the late Robin Williams. There had been the spinoff “Zathura” from 2005, but the 2017 film directly connects from the very first. It should also make for a good promotion to the actual movie sequel as it will be coming out a month earlier.
Video game from a game-based movie
The “Jumanji” videogame is a collaborative development by studio Funsolve, Outright Games and Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe. It will, much like many graphically high-end titles released in this decade, be built off of the ever-praised Unreal Engine 4 from Epic Games. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Funsolve founder and the game’s director, Richard Tawn, is looking forward to making this first major video game title for their studio, and adds that they were both inspired and challenged to render the lush and dangerous wilderness and jungle setting of “Welcome to the Jungle” in a playable form.
For those who need a refresher, “Jumanji” is a book-inspired franchise concerning a magical game that is both wondrous and deadly unless finished by its players.
From the dice-and-token board game of the first entry in 1995, it has become a multiplayer game cartridge circa the events of “Welcome to the Jungle,” that sucks four high school students that have picked it up to play. Their game avatars are given plenty of attention in the first teaser of the title. Though it does not quite explain further how the “Jumanji” video game is actually played, but we know it is multiplayer.
Multiplayer party split-screen or online
Entertainment Weekly elaborates that “Jumanji: The Video Game” will have four players partying up, whether together on a split-screen or online. So far, the following characters are confirmed playable: adventurer archeologist Bravestone (played in-movie by Dwayne Johnson), cartographer paleontologist Oberon (Jack Black), zoologist weapons-handler Mouse (Kevin Hart) and martial artist commando Roundhouse (Karen Gillian).
For those who recall the “Welcome to the Jungle” movie, they would know there is a fifth player character too. He was not spotted but Richard Tawn promises there are more reveals to come over the year before the game comes out.
“Jumanji: The Video Game” will release on November 15 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows and the Nintendo Switch. The third “Jumanji” film continuing from “Welcome to the Jungle” will hit theaters December 13.
