Up for a trek?

BENGALURU : Trekking the World is, as the name suggests, a game about travelling the world and seeing its wonders for 2-5 people. You’ll race to visit historic destinations while collecting souvenirs along the way, all in a quest to have the most points.

It’s a straightforward premise, but Trekking the World brings it to life with its aesthetic. Drenched in cheerful colour and featuring gorgeously illustrated cards, it sets the tone from the moment you lay it out on the table. The little artistic details and flourishes are lovely, and it’s definitely the sort of game that would make people stop and ask what it’s about.

Good looks are all well and good, but thankfully Trekking the World has a solid gameplay foundation as well. You’ll have to manage the cards in your hand carefully in order to get where you need to go, and there’s certainly more to think about than you’ll initially expect. Destinations are public objectives that everyone can see, meaning it’s very likely that you’ll be gunning for the same things as other players and inevitably getting in each other’s way.

This isn’t a cutthroat game by any means, but there’s enough competition here to provoke calls for a rematch once final scoring is done. Although nobody can ignore the destinations entirely, you can try focusing on souvenir-hunting instead because there are lots of points on offer there. Apart from that, replayability is enhanced by the Journey cards two of these are chosen at random for every game, and provide you with a couple of new opportunities or ways to break the core rules of the game. We’ve seen this particular method of adding variability recently with Holi and, just like that game, it works extremely well here.

There’s not too much more that can be said, really. Trekking the World is a very good game it’s accessible, around the same complexity as Ticket to Ride, and pretty and it’s fun to play. However, I think it particularly strikes a chord given the current situation. Halfway through a second year of upheaval and new normals, it can sometimes be strange to think about things that we might’ve taken for granted once.

Hugging a friend, for example, or eating out, or just being able to travel and see somewhere new. A little escapism can go a really long way right now, and that’s what playing Trekking the World felt like to me a portal to another world where we could all be planning trips to faraway lands to visit places we’ve always dreamt of going.

What’s New?

Trails
If you’d like your escapism to be a little closer to nature, you might want to take a look at Trails. A sort of sibling to the excellent Parks, Trails features the same beautiful artwork of the Fifty-Nine Parks series, slimmed-down gameplay and a shorter overall duration which ought to make it more accessible.

Lucky Numbers
The introduction to Lucky Numbers describes it as being ‘at the crossroads of Sudoku and bingo’, and that’s pretty accurate. This game’s been around for a while now, but its online implementation has been keeping me busy of late. Games are ridiculously quick and somehow still satisfying enough that you’ll rarely play just one.

Gloomholdin’
Condensing one of the biggest board game boxes into a game with just 18 cards sounds like madness, but that’s what Gloomholdin’ purports to have done to Gloomhaven. Cephalofair Games deserves a shout-out for letting this design be shared publicly and making the original artwork available for use as well.

Arjun Sukumaran

 http://goo.gl/uNBWN3

(Arjun is a gamer, book lover and an all-round renaissance man)