10 Board Games Like Indiana Jones – Including one with a boulder!

If you love the Indiana Jones films and want to get some board game action of the similar theme. This article is for you and you will find 10 board games like Indiana Jones that will provide adventure, revolvers, whips and archeology.

If you own Gloomhaven then checkout the Bonus game as this will be perfect for a solo Indy outing.

Let’s excavate and uncover the board games like Indiana Jones. Starting with the awesome Fortune and Glory.

Table of Contents

1. Fortune and Glory
2. Escape: The Curse of the Temple
3. The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac
4. Thebes
5. Incan Gold
6. Lost Ruins of Arnak
7. The Lost Expedition
8. Karuba
9. The Quest for El Dorado
10. 7th Continent
11. Bonus: Gloomhaven Fan Scenario
12. Conclusion

Fortune and Glory

The game is sold as a 1-8 player game and along with this there are different types you can play. You can choose to play solo, competitive, cooperative, or in a team game.

The game has decks for enemies, gear, allies and locations that will be drawn and used suring the game. Your objective is to win fortune and glory represented by different colored coins.

It also has fantastic little miniatures for all the different heroes, villains, and temples. It even has a Zeppelin. The game turn has 4 phases:

• Initiative phase
• Move phase
• Adventure phase
• End phase

As the players move around the board they will enter spaces with artifacts and villains. You also roll dice to have a chance to generate a random event. If you land on an artifact space then you can search for it. If there is a villain then you will need to fight them. All whilst seeking to gain your fortune.

If you gain enough fortune before the enemy progresses along the villain track then you will win the game. However, if they reach the designated marker on the villain track then you lose.

This game has travel, artifact hunting and combat along with the period enemy of the nazis. Indiana would be in his element playing this game and so will you.

Escape: The Curse of the Temple

You all start off on a single revealed tile whilst the other temple tiles are placed in a draw pile. The temple has been cursed and this means your exit has been hidden. In order to reveal the exit you must collect enough gems to break the curse.

You move around and unlock gems by using a dice. It all sounds quite easy except that this game comes with an Audio CD that when played gives you only 10 minutes to find the exit and get everyone out!

On top of that there are no turns and rounds but instead every player rolls their dice as quickly as possible. As they roll there is a dice face that traps that dice and can only be unlocked if another golden mask dice face is rolled. If all your dice are blocked then another adventurer must make their way to your room and roll the golden mask to release you.

This leads to a massively frantic and fun game as you madly roll your dice and communicate in a scramble to escape before the audio runs out. If that happens then you are entombed forever.

This is a really amazingly fun game that is really easy to learn and has all the elements of Indiana’s temple escaping antics. It is a great party game for 4 or more players.

The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac

You are in the temple and need to roll dice to move towards the exit and escape. As you go there will be opportunity to grab loot. Don’t be too slow though, if that boulder overtakes you and plugs the exit you’re doomed.

This great game will have you tiptoeing across symbolized paving stones trying to decipher them. Make a mistake and you may well fall into the lava flow below! You can try and take the river or rickety bridge as shortcuts.

Watchout! The river ends with a waterfall and the bridge is falling apart as you cross. This nail biting game is lots of fun for the whole family. Sold as 10 years and up you and your kids will have lots of fun.

Thebes

Before you go of hunting the dig sites of the world though you can visit various cities and gain knowledge. The more knowledge you gain the more successful your dig will be.

Each dig site has its own bag full of artifacts with varying points. There are also artifacts that are worthless. The more knowledge you have obtained the more times you get to draw from the bag.

Any worthless artifacts are placed back into the bag but the scoring ones you keep. So it is really beneficial to get to a site first. This is a balancing act between gathering knowledge and making a dash to a site before your opponent.

If you go too early then you won’t be able to draw many artificats and could even end up empty handed! Go too late and there’ll be nothing left.

This is a great game that will have you chasing across the globe trying to outwit your opponents.

Incan Gold

In this game you are competing against your fellow adventurers to find the hidden treasure within an ancient Incan temple. This comes in the form of Turquoise, Obsidian, Gold, or Artifacts.

The game is played over 5 rounds. Each player has two cards, one to stay searching for treasure and one to leave the temple and bank what you’ve found. The game revolves around a deck of cards.

The deck is a mix of treasure cards, disaster cards, and an artifact card. One artifact card is shuffled into the deck at the beginning of each round. Cards are then drawn from the deck.

• If it is a treasure card it will denote a number of gems. This is divided between the number of players and any remainder put on the treasure card.
• If it is an artifact then nothing happens. These are worth 5 gems (i.e. 1 obsidian). If you are the only player to leave the temple then you will get the artifact and the score.
• If it is a disaster card then again nothing happens. If two of the same disasters are drawn and you are still in the temple then you lose all the gems you have that are not banked.

As you draw cards you will add to the gems as treasure cards are turned over. Before the next card is turned everyone gets to vote using their stay or leave cards. If you leave you bank any gems you have collected and place them in a nice pop up tent.

At the end of 5 rounds the person with the most treasure wins the game.

This is a fantastic game for 3-8 players and works much better with more players. It makes for a great family or party game as it is really easy to learn. It is all about holding your nerve and banking at the right time. Snap up a few artifacts and you could be a winner.

Lost Ruins of Arnak

The game is a mix between deck building and worker placement and works really well with this mix. You gain items and artifacts by visiting locations on the board. To perform movement and actions you use the cards in your hand to move to locations.

You will also be fighting guardians who protect some of the locations. If you don’t then the guardians will take resources from you every time you visit that location. You gain victory points through various different ways such as collecting artifacts or defeating guardians both provide victory points.

Along with this mechanic you also get to develop a tech tree that will help you on your quest. This game has great components and the artwork is great. It is a little more complex than the other games so far in this list (other than perhaps Fortune and Glory). But that does make it a very enjoyable game to play.

The Lost Expedition

In this game for 1-5 players there are three modes of play: Solo (1 player), Cooperative (2-5 players), or Head to Head (2 players).

The game has a series of cards laid out to represent the forest and the lost city of Z at one end. Your party begins at the other end and your objective is to arrive at Z.

For solo and cooperative you select three adventurers for your party. You then have a single meeple to represent the party who must make it through the jungle to Z. For head to head each player has a party of 3 and a meeple each. So it is a race to get to Z.

Each member of the party has health tokens and when these run out the member dies. The party also has food and bullets as resources.

The game is driven by the Adventure Card deck and we’ll discuss cooperative mode here. Each player will be dealt a hand of 4 cards (2 players deal 6 each) that will represent a path through the jungle and events that take place.

Each player will place a card on the table in turns until each has placed 2 cards. The cards have numbers on them and should then be ordered numerically low to high, left to right. This indicates the path you will travel.

Now each card will have a series of actions that must be resolved. For example, your first card may be the Abandoned Camp card. You’ll have a choice of gaining 2 bullets or gaining an expertise that you can use later.

The next card may be Leeches in which case you will lose a health point from one of the explorers and a food. You will also discard the last card from the path shortening your progress.

If at any point during the game the meeple arrives at Z then the game ends and you win. You will lose if you go through the adventure deck twice or all the members of your party die.

This is a great survival game and you will struggle to puzzle out the moves and actions. Choosing the best action that will help you survive and move forward towards the lost city of Z.

This is a good game for solo players. Saying that all the modes are really great, making this a nice flexible game. If you have a good sense of imagination then you can also begin to develop a storyline as you work through the actions in the deck.

Karuba

Each player gets a board and 4 colored temples and 4 meeple adventurers. They also get a series of 36 tiles that will have different paths on them. Each path could lead from one side to another, or have a three way junction on it, or a bend.

One player will take their tiles and shuffle them into a deck to be drawn by them. The other players will lay out their tiles so they can see them clearly. The meeple adventurers and temples will then be put in different locations around the edge of the board. This is replicated in the same locations on each player’s board.

The objective of the game is now to create paths and move your meeple through the jungle until they reach the same colored temple on your board.

To start the player with the draw pile will turn over a tile. Each tile has a unique number from 1-36. Whichever numbered tile they draw the other players will pick from their own tiles. Now each player can place their tile anywhere on the board.

The tile must be the right way up though. If the tile has a gem on it then a gem is taken and placed on it. When a meeple lands on the tile they get the gem.

In this way they will make paths through the jungle that the meeples can then travel down. In order to move the player must discard a tile rather than put it out on the board. Then each path that exits the tile will be the number of spaces the player can move their meeple. This could be 2, 3 or 4 moves.

Each meeple that reaches a temple first will receive an artifact worth 5 victory points. The second of that color will get 3. There are only victory points for the first 2 players per colored temple.

The game ends when all the tiles are used up or a player gets all four of their meeples to the temples. Everyone adds their victory points and the winner is the one with the most.

This is really easy to learn and pick up. It is also really engaging and the puzzle element means it works well for families.

The Quest for El Dorado

In this game for 2-4 players each player leads their team across the dense jungle of South America. It is a deck building racing game where the first person to reach El Dorado will win all the treasures that it holds.

You start off with a fairly basic deck and use the cards in order to move across the landscape. This is made up of tiles that are configured into a map for you to traverse at the beginning of the game.

Each map start off with spaces that require low cards in order to move through them. As the tiles progress towards the final El Dorado tile the requirements become more complex.

The first spaces may need a single machete card to move through them. Allowing you to string three machete cards together to move three spaces. However, some of the later spaces may require 3 machette’s to move across them. You will need to have a 3 machete card in your hand to move.

As you play through the game you are able to buy more cards into your hand allowing you to move further.

The Quest for El Dorado is a lot easier to learn than The Lost Expedition and a great option to introduce someone into a deck building game. The game is about finding the quickest way through the jungle and will have you seeking shortcuts. Careful though that your opponent doesn’t cut you off and make you go the long way round.

7th Continent

This is a classic mystery survival game set in 1907. You have just returned from discovering the mysterious 7th Continent and are feeling a bit unwell. It appears that you have somehow picked up a curse on you.

Your goal is to travel through the 7th continent and discover its secrets in the hope of lifting the curse and surviving. The whole point of the game is that it is a mystery so at the start you will have little direction or know what to do.

The mechanics will have you revealing parts of the island as you travel which will give you choices to make. Make the wrong choices and there is only one result.

I don’t want to go into too much here as it will spoil the game. Other than to say that it is a real adventure in the true Indy style with curses and supernatural events.

This is a big game and it is likely to be for the more serious board gamer. Each scenario can take 2-3 hours to play. There is a great mechanism for ‘saving’ the game so that you can come back to it later though.

This game is another good solo game to pick up. If you want a storytelling adventure board game then this is a really good choice.

Bonus: Gloomhaven Fan Scenario

The scenario was created by Eric Herman and he has clearly put some incredible work into it. There are graphics and some printing you’ll need to do to print the cards.

It has everything you need to play an Indiana Jones styled Gloomhaven complete with Nazis, puzzles and traps. I had to include this for those Gloomhaven fans.

If you don’t know what Gloomhaven is then check out my Gloomhaven Board Game Review. Gloomhaven is also in my 20 Best Solo Board Games 2022 article too.

Conclusion

I hope I have inspired you to seek out some of these great board games like Indiana Jones that will get your whip cracking. There are some great games for the family, friends, or even solo. Whether you want to seek fortune, gather gold, or fight mobsters there is something for everyone.

Have fun!