Jungle - Rules, History & Strategy Guide

Jungle — Dou Shou Qi, the Game of Fighting Animals, sold in English as Animal Chess — is a Chinese two-player board game whose ancestry is genuinely unrecorded. R. C. Bell, sent the game by a Hong Kong correspondent in the 1960s, knew nothing of where it came from, and David Pritchard calls the origins obscure, possibly a development of xiangqi. Treat any site quoting a precise invention date with suspicion.

What is not in doubt is the design. Eight animals ranked elephant down to rat, two rivers only the rat may swim, six trap squares that strip an intruder of all rank, and a den to storm. Parlett notes simply that the game "plays well" — the mark of long refinement, whatever its age.

Each side commands eight animals on a 7×9 board. You win by moving any animal into the enemy den, or by capturing every enemy piece.

1. Every animal moves one square up, down, left or right — never diagonally, and never into its own den.
2. An animal captures an enemy of equal or lower rank: elephant 8, lion 7, tiger 6, leopard 5, wolf 4, dog 3, cat 2, rat 1.
3. The rat is the exception that makes the game: it alone kills the elephant, but only with its feet on dry land.
4. Only the rat may enter the two rivers. In the water it is untouchable from land — and equally unable to reach land itself.
5. The lion and tiger leap a river to the first dry square beyond, capturing what stands there; the lion may also leap sideways. Any rat in the water blocks the jump.
6. An animal standing in an enemy trap drops to rank 0 and can be taken by anything. Step off and its rank returns.

• Your rat is worth far more than rank 1 suggests: it is your elephant-killer and your river gate. Parked in the water it cancels the enemy lion and tiger leaps on that side.
• Never leave your elephant beside an enemy trap — a cat can take it there.
• Trade down, not across. Every swap that removes a high enemy animal for a low one of yours shortens the road to the den.
• Keep one defender within two squares of your own den; a den is only safe if you can get back faster than they can arrive.
• The lion’s horizontal leap crosses the whole river in one move and is the quickest way to switch flanks.

Widely played variants shift the balance in small ways: some forbid the elephant from ever taking the rat, some let the leopard leap the river horizontally, some rank the tiger above the lion or make the two equal, and some make all traps universal so an animal is vulnerable even on its own. There is also a stripped-down "animal checkers" with no rivers or traps and only four animals. Arcadia implements the standard ruleset.