The Sims 4 Jungle Adventure is the 6th game pack to be released for The Sims 4, retailing at the new increased price of £17.99 GBP or $19.99 USD. Jungle Adventure let’s you take your sims on a vacation to Selvadorada, a Hispanic themed land just ripe for exploring and excavating. Getting past the somewhat murky waters of the morals of archaeology for a minute, Salvadorada is a nice change of pace, and offers a much more entertaining vacation spot compared to Granite Falls from Outdoor Retreat. The new game pack includes a new location to vacation to, new CAS and build mode items, new activities, new ambitions, and new skills for your sims to master.
Jungle Adventure brings with it a handful of archaeology and Savadoradan themed clothing and hairstyles perfect for digging up finds in the trenches. I really enjoyed creating my own archaeologist using stereotypical movie 19th century explorer getup, although I’m not sure how frequently I’ll use these in my normal gameplay. There are some new hairstyles included as well which are a bit more versatile, but obviously these are almost exclusively for female adults. I’ve given up being surprised by the fact that the Sims team at EA seem to cater exclusively to adult female sims in their clothing options, although at least you can use these for male sims as well now. The build mode items match the Salvadoradan aesthetic, and would compliment a Seasons expansion pack when that eventually gets released.
Jungle Adventure features archaeology, which is now a skill to be learned through reading or getting your sim down and dirty in the trenches. Sims can assess and find dig sites, and get stuck in by digging up artefacts which need to be evaluated and authenticated at a portable archaeology workbench. I’m a bit disappointed that an archaeologist isn’t a career option, but amateur archaeology is (mostly) better than no archaeology! This was definitely the addition that I was most excited about, partly because it’s what I study at university, but mostly because vacation packs have always been my favourite in the past. I was worried that Jungle Adventure would suffer by comparison, but it manages to just be different enough that it holds up on its own. There’s also new ambitions available in this pack called Archaeology Scholar and Jungle Explorer to complete for two new reward traits.
In addition to archaeology, Jungle Adventure allows you to explore and plunder the many wonders of the jungle in Salvadorada. Among the public lots and private rented holiday accommodations, there are several secret lots in Salvadorada for your sim to explore and attempt to find the temple at its heart. The temple, and your progress in the jungle, is reset after each visit, meaning you’ll have to stock up on plenty of supplies each trip. During your explorations, your sim will have random encounters when travelling through different areas, often leading to minor inconveniences or even death if you’re not prepared. The temple itself is also a walking death trap, relying on several skills to solve puzzles unscathed and reach the treasure within each 5 temples. This reminded me a lot of exploring tombs in The Sims 3 World Adventures, but there’s much less to do here in comparison.
Another interesting element of this pack is the Salvadoradan culture itself. New cocktails, recipes, and dance moves can be unlocked by sims with a high enough local culture skill. This skill maxes out at level 5, and can by developed by talking to locals, eating local food, or even just drinking local cocktails at the bar. Once you’ve proven yourself, your sim can get access to secret menus and secret shops full of exploration supplies, not to mention some interesting cultural dance moves. This new skill seems to be a weird combination of other activities rolled into one, but it’s quite nice when interacting with other sims in the area.
Jungle Adventures includes a lot of fun new gameplay elements to The Sims 4 for your sim to mess around with. The amount of content here is fairly typical for the game packs so far, but I can’t help but think I would have preferred this to be an expansion like previous versions of the holiday expansions in the series. I really like the inclusion of archaeology, and the fact that you can temporarily turn your sim into a skeleton makes for some pretty funny interactions with other sims. For £17.99/$19.99 I would struggle to recommend it to everyone, but if you’re looking for a fun distraction from your normal simming, or you’re just an archaeology buff like me, I would definitely recommend giving this pack a go.
