Jungle or dou shou qi is a modern Chinese board game with an obscure history. A British version known as "Jungle King" was sold in the 1960s by the John Waddington company. The game is played on a 7×9 board and is popular with children in the Far East. Jungle is a two-player strategy game and has been cited by The Playboy Winner's Guide to Board Games as resembling the Western game Stratego. The game is also known as the jungle game, children's chess, oriental chess and animal chess.

Overview

The Jungle gameboard represents a jungle terrain with dens, traps "set" around dens, and rivers. Each player controls eight game pieces representing different animals of various rank. Stronger-ranked animals can capture ("eat") animals of weaker or equal rank. The player who is first to maneuver any one of their pieces into the opponent's den wins the game. An alternative way to win is to capture all the opponent's pieces.

Board

The Jungle, usually made of paper, consists of seven and nine of squares (7×9 rectangle = 63 squares). Pieces move on the squares as in chess, not on the grid lines as in xiangqi. Pictures of eight animals and their names appear on each side of the board to indicate initial placement of the game pieces. After initial setup, these designated squares have no special meaning in the. There are several special squares and areas of the Jungle board:

Pieces

Each player has eight game pieces representing different animals, each with a different rank, and in their own colour (blue versus red). The animal ranking, from strongest to weakest, is: Pieces start on squares with pictures corresponding to their animal, which are invariably shown on the Jungle board.

Rules

Movement

Players alternate moves with Blue moving first. During their turn, a player must move. All pieces can move one square horizontally or vertically (not diagonally). A piece may not move into its own den. Animals of either side can move into and out of any trap square. There are special rules related to the water squares:

Capturing

Animals capture opponent pieces by "killing/eating" them (the attacking piece the captured piece on its square; the captured piece is removed from the game). A piece can capture any enemy piece that has the same or lower rank, with the following exceptions:

Minor variations

There are some commonly played variations, as follows: Improve variances to reduce drawing games: