Jaws board game will let you be (or be eaten by) the shark

Dun-dun. Dun-dun. Dundundundundundundundun. You know where we’re going with this: movie classic Jaws is being turned into a board game.

Steven Spielberg’s 1975 tale (based on the book) of one giant shark and one not-big-enough boat of snack-sized humans is coming to the tabletop later this year thanks to the team behind Disney board game Villainous and Choose Your Own Adventure adaptation House of Danger at design studio Prospero Hall.

The game loosely follows the plot of the film, being broken into two acts that follows the action first on Amity Island as the shark terrorises swimmers before shifting onto the Orca boat as Brody, Hooper and Quint face off against the great white.

Despite Jaws not really being about a shark, one of the players will take on the role of the underwater threat itself, evading capture during the first half of the game before attacking the Orca and its crew in the second.

Meanwhile, the players controlling Brody, Hooper and Quint must try to work out the shark’s location in order to save swimmers before using cards to defend their ship and ultimately kill the shark before it kills them.

The gameplay will be driven by cards, with character and event actions played on both sides of the showdown. The board flips over to provide the coastal and open water environments of the two acts.

While Jaws the movie runs in at 130 minutes, Jaws the board game will apparently take us through the whole film in around an hour. (You might have to provide your own John Williams soundtrack.)

This year’s Jaws appears to be the first stab at an official board game based on the film since it was released 40-plus years ago, when it was accompanied by an Operation-like dexterity game called The Game of Jaws about extracting junk from the shark’s mouth without its spring-loaded gob snapping shut. It seems like 2019's tabletop take on one of the greatest movies of all time might come closer to living up to its legacy – with just as much terror.