If you are a fan of the movie Jaws and simple to pick up and play board games then Jaws: No Swimming, Beach Closed might be the perfect game for you. This board game can be played with more than two players, however only one player can be Jaws and the rest of the players are on a team together, trying to protect swimmers.
In front of you on the table, in Jaws: No Swimming, Beach Closed is made up of a grid of water tiles, with three swimmers (placed by person or team who plays as the boat) and an island at each corner. On the shark’s side of the table, there is a divider that makes it so that you cannot see the card in front of them. The shark can also place mini-swimmer tiles to keep track of them, and draw on their board with the black marker they have. I used this to mark off which tiles were removed from the map when I played as a shark. The shark also has four extra action tokens and a card that tells their move structure and health points.
The other side of the table is where the boat player or players are. They get a card that has the turn cycle of the boat and a counter that allows them to move the swimmers up to three times per game. On the boat’s turn, they are able to move two, shoot into the tile they are on, and remove a water tile. They can also use one of their four bonus tokens or one of their three bonus moves if they still have them. These are all single use per game and can be stacked too, but there is little to gain in that! On the shark’s turn, they are able to move up to two tiles (or none at all), move their on-board shark tile to an adjacent tile to where the shark is, and remove a water tile. If the shark is able to swim below a swimmer, the shark can yell kill, eating the swimmer (removing it from the board) and then moving one tile beyond the swimmer.
The bonus actions for both the shark and the boat feel very useful; the shark can bring back water (which helps when the boat makes single-water streams to get to a swimmer), not have to put down the shark token to show where they are, and have extra moves. The boat on the other hand can do very useful boat stuff like move the swimmer to a safer place. Jaws: No Swimming, Beach Closed is a very simple game to pick up and play, but then becomes more complex as the water gets smaller and there are shots fired!
You can find Jaws: No Swimming, Beach Closed on Shuffle’s Website.
Love board games? Check out our list of the top board games we’ve reviewed.
